


As Love Is Before It Loves

by MumblingSage



Category: Henry IV Part 1 - Shakespeare, Henry V - Shakespeare, SHAKESPEARE William - Works, The Hollow Crown (2012)
Genre: And So Much More, D/s, F/M, Facial Shaving, Femdom, First Time, Fix-It, Implied/Referenced Homophobia, Intoxication, M/M, Masochism, Multi, Polyamory, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Royalty, Sadism, Submission, Wedding Night, Whipping
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-15
Updated: 2015-09-30
Packaged: 2018-02-25 12:05:11
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 37,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2621078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MumblingSage/pseuds/MumblingSage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In her quest to master her husband, Catherine of France looks to Henry's past and finds an unexpected ally.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Generosity

**Author's Note:**

> Shoutout to Thepurposeofplaying for inspiring, cheerleading, and brainstorming on this one.
> 
> Also huge thanks to Inkyonx at 8tracks for making a fanmix of this story!  
> http://8tracks.com/inkyonyx/when-love-becomes-the-reason

Greatly complicating matters was the fact that, on the whole, Catherine rather liked her husband. It was a personal affection, independent of rank or duty or position. Her heart thrilled at the sound of her name, of “Kate,” from his lips. It was mixed, like water to wine, with more than a little lust.

He was a generous lover, thorough yet gentle—at times so gentle it seemed hypocritical. She would not wish him rougher, not necessarily. Sometimes she thought she wished for roughness and yet—ah, it made things very complicated. Her thoughts, and his seeming kindnesses.

He was very charming, Harry Plantagenet.  Catherine still blushed at the memory of his proposal. Of Alice stammering to translate his words fast enough, of his joy even as—or because—he could not resist letting his tongue run away with his own cleverness. It was an infectious cheer, endearing and not a little flattering.

Flattering, too, what he offered her. She only understood pieces of it, from the English she had struggled to learn. Catherine had been learning his language ever since she first heard that he wanted her. She had been planning to meet his proposal ever since rumor reached her of it. These lessons, these distant plans, were how she filled the years of waiting to rule his country at his side.

She had dreamed of it for so long that she worried that she  dreamed still when she heard the very offer from his lips: "Take me…and I am thine, England is thine, France is thine, and Harry Plantagenet is thine."

All her hard-earned words had fled her at this. And he was beautifully formed, for all he mocked his own appearance. She had not expected to find his body so attractive. His kiss was a surprise, and at first she stood unmoving beneath it from the shock—and then from curiosity, studying the softness and warmth of his lips and the eager way they curled against hers. Witchcraft.

He flattered her yet more afterwards. All lies—his flattery and self-denigration both. Even her dreams of a crown could not hide this from her. The English king was a suitor more to Catherine’s country than her person. Yet it was generous of him—kind of him—flattering of him to pretend to be her suitor. Yes, he was charming—and she thought he kissed rather well. His tongue was full of deceits, yet capable of other interesting tricks as well.

She’d come to learn them.

Harry was a selfless lover, never taking his pleasure until he had given her even more, seemingly more focused on her flesh than his own, as if he forgot he had a body in her bed. Catherine lay there, accepting his caresses. Outwardly passive, but taking what he offered.

It stymied her. Her king touched her with feathering fingertips and soft laps of his tongue, like she was made of glass—exactly as a glass woman would wish to be touched, Catherine thought. She remembered her father and the temporary madness that would afflict him, the times he cowered from a friendly hand lest it should shatter him. She had no such madness, thank God, no such fears. She was not fragile. And she found being treated so was nearly more disturbing than roughness would have been. Conscious or unconscious, such gentleness reminded her that she was at the mercy of the man in bed with her. It was no good to be at the mercy of a king, however generous.

But she was not entirely certain what else to do. 

There had been glimpses. That very first night, after the magnificent ceremony at the cathedral in Troyes—fit for a triumphant king--they sat together at the high table as it groaned beneath a feast. Henry passed all the choicest pieces to her, but for his part ate sparsely. Catherine believed she was the only one who noticed just how much he drank.  He wavered as they walked to the bedchamber, but who would not be unsteady from the force of such high spirits and anticipation?

She was not quite solid on her feet, either.

Despite her best efforts, Catherine was irritable as she dismissed her ladies. Their frets and nerves played on hers. She could not for her soul’s sake see what had them so bothered; _they_ were not about to go to bed with a drunken foreign king.

She glanced across the room at her husband, who spoke in a low tone but with a broad grin to the lords who had accompanied him. He reached out for the bedpost, as if that slender wooden rod might help to hold him up. His fingers curled around it, and she wondered if he was as anxious as her ladies thought she should be. If that was why he had reached for wine. Going to bed with a foreign princess was not an easy thing, either.

But when they had climbed into the bed, when their audience had retreated and they were together and she reached out for him—he turned to her, with a hesitation only she could detect, and when her hands settled on his shoulders and his arms went around her, pressing their bodies together, she felt how hard he was. He gusted a sigh as her fingers, curious and unguided, brushed the join of his thighs. She smelled the bittersweet fumes of wine on his breath, and from another person it would have disgusted her. But here in this bedroom it was oddly intimate, and the sigh itself was intriguing.

She pressed, rubbed at him through velvet. His hands were interlocked at the hollow of her back, and with a surge they pressed her closer. Now Catherine was the one to sigh. The English king, her husband, chuckled softly. She felt his body quivering against hers.

“Ah, Kate,” he whispered. That strange, short English name he had given her. That night she began to like the hard sound of it.

Her hand was still caught between them; she moved it again, stroking. It won her release, his grip slackening. As she reached for the buttons of his doublet, Henry fell back on the bed. Catherine followed him. She straddled her husband and, working by touch, in the dark, undressed him.

Her fingers were unsteady, and he was little help at all. He lay still, at least, not resisting her touch (would he?) and not trying to take over and further muddle them. She was no more familiar with how a man’s clothes were put together than his body, and she was learning both by fumbling exploration.

She’d been told how it went, in much the same terms she had been taught to thread a needle. Albeit without the benefit of demonstration. And the whispering ladies had assumed _he_ could do the real work, would determine when and how.

She smelled his breath as she leaned over him, and this time there seemed a sweetness to the sharp winey scent. Henry hadn’t appeared susceptible to drink  before; he’d bartered for this marriage and played at courting her soberly. But this night was special—either celebration or hesitation, desire or anxiety, had pushed him to this transformation. He all but mewed as she stripped the last cloth away and let her fingers form a fist around his rod.

“ _Jesu_.” His hips pumped; he thrust into it. God, the feeling was nothing like she had expected: harder than she’d thought such sensitive flesh should be, but with a surface like silk, soft and slick. Not the sword she’d been led to fear—and only now, as she knew he wasn’t in any state to impale her on it, did she realize how much she _had_ feared that, a barbaric indignity.

Yet what did happen was not precisely dignified. She toyed with him a little more, amusing herself—and the thought, that she could _amuse_ herself with this king, was oddly exciting—and as his oaths flew thick and sharp she felt a welling of her own slickness. It was preparation, she knew. When she felt ready, she knelt over him and lowered herself.

His hands found her waist, gripped hard but didn’t draw her down. He let her move at her own pace, only rising to meet her with a swift thrust at the very end, as if he could no longer stand the slow torture.

Catherine hissed, her own hands tightening on his shoulders. It did not feel dignified, or comfortable. But it was not pain, or if it was the pain was mixed with something far more heady. She rose and fell on him again, experimentally, and found the motion easy. She wanted it faster, so she did it with a snap of her hips, and then she knew she wanted to move just— _so—_ as if her body was tracing a curve. As Henry rocked beneath her, she knew she was taking his with it.

So this is what it was like, to take him.

“Jesus,” he said, breathless and rough, and then his name for her again—as she moved faster, feeling sweat break out between her breasts, trickling over skin gone hot with blushing, his tongue drew out the syllable, roughened it, so that it sounded almost proper, almost French, _Cat_.

She said nothing, unable and unwilling to distract herself from her body to find words.

But she listened to his, as the names of his savior and his queen mixed in his mouth.

Her hand pressed her mound, rubbing it with each thrust, a familiar game she had never played so openly. Yet it wasn’t a sin now, was it? As she coupled with the man she’d married? Somewhere along the way, the tightness coiling in her flesh suddenly released; flowed on and on in a flood, a tide churning her thighs. She felt stickiness when she separated from her husband and lay beside him. She didn’t want to think what it was made of, what she had taken in and what, if anything, had been taken from her.

Catherine awoke the next morning with Henry’s fingers in her hair, stroking lightly. His gentleness and the instant of stillness when she opened her eyes suggested that he hadn’t meant to wake her. But when their gazes met, he smiled, and went back to touching her. Weak gray dawn heralded the coming sun. In its twilight, she spread her arms, let her head fall back, let him explore her. As his callused fingertips circled her breast, a sweet pang made Catherine part her legs.

He rose over her and she waited, curious. Last night seemed to have depleted all of her strength; spent, she was content to let him be the one to move now, his hands and then his mouth passing over her body. His kisses were soft, leisurely. Yet they ended soon enough that she missed them. This invader king had a talent for not overstaying his welcome.

If he suffered any lingering effects from the wine, she couldn’t tell it. She stroked the hair back from his high forehead, saw his brows furrow as his eyelashes fell down (he was so close they stroked her skin). He wore a look of focus, perhaps similar to what she’d had the night before. His beard rubbed against her, stroking roughly, and she considered voicing a murmur of protest but in the end chose not to. It would be distracting, more distracting than the slight, intriguing discomfort.

He drew back as he reached the join of her thighs. Kate sighed, both relieved and disappointed. Just as well not to be searched and scratched at those tender folds, yet…

His fingers slid among them, parted them, opened her like a door. His tongue darted out, and then she could not see what happened as he leaned in but she felt it.

He licked every inch of her, inside and out. She squirmed, and he moved on; she rocked her hips, and he darted swift, hot flicks to meet them. And then she felt his lips purse and suck, his tongue stroking with the heavy and deliberate motions of a cat cleaning itself. He was washing the stickiness from her—blood, if she’d shed any, and his seed and her slickness. Instinctively she found it debasing—surely it would be forbidden, if anyone thought to speak of such a defiling thing—and Catherine ran her hand again back from his high brow and sighed at it and smiled.

He was so gentle, yet committed this outrage against himself, his royal body—the tongue which flattered so and bargained and commanded, doing _this_ —

The release which seized Catherine that morning was far greater than her climax the previous night, spurred to heights by the depth she found him in, though it took her a long time to admit this to herself.

She learned to like the name “Kate” and his high-spirited voice that said it. She appreciated his gentleness and the fact that he had bothered to court her. She liked his face seemingly more than he did, and the warmth of his long limbs wrapped around her. She found him charming and flattering, and sweet and heady as rich wine.

But complicating it all was the fact that this man had invaded her kingdom, slaughtered her people, demanded her hand in marriage as a prize. The man who treated her gently had her at his mercy. She was his spoils of war, and for that she ought to hate him.

She _did_ hate him. Why else would her spirit thrill that morning, when he debased himself and gave her pleasure? Why else would she pursue the ideas it provoked—pursuing them silently, with no outward suggestion, but with constancy, like a nun bending to her rosary?

He thought he had wooed her. The world thought he had conquered her. Most galling still, Catherine could not claim for certain that either thought was wrong.

And what did he think, her lover, France’s conqueror, her generous king?

Catherine’s only unambiguous feeling towards her husband, between desire and hatred, was curiosity. She enjoyed learning his body and his language. The hands, the fingers long and callused, the nails—and her nails, that raked his back in the heights of her passion, that might do more. His long neck, his lightly bearded chin (she still pronounced it _sin,_ although he’d cheerfully taught her that sin was something else again). Feet—the word still sounded obscene to her—her feet, which he knelt between at the foot of the bed, reaching with long arms to stroke over her legs and thighs before he brought his body down to hers.

There were more words she wanted to learn, for her flesh and for his, but she didn’t even have the words to ask for them. Sometimes she thought of simply grabbing Harry’s hand and pulling it to where she wanted his touch, or grasping his head and pushing him down to where he wasn’t moving fast enough. She wanted to reach for him as she desired.

Did she hold back out of fear? Not knowing the consequences of forcing a king’s hand (or mouth, or more intimate flesh yet)?

So she set to learning those consequences. She set to learning her husband’s mind.

Alice took to England far better than most of Catherine’s ladies, already familiar with the climate and customs from her previous journeys. She explored the court at Windsor with the eagerness of a much younger woman, and was absolutely gleeful to share her gleanings with her lady—now her Queen. Alice had helped her learn English, helped her prepare for this throne. Now her information could help Catherine set the terms of this arrangement, this marriage as much as the alliance it brought.

France had been defeated; Catherine had not.

And yet, for that defeat—for the thousands of dead, for knights cut down in their flower, for fields destroyed and harvests gone to waste, for despoiled cities and the war-haunted dreams of so many of her people—she felt she was owed revenge for that, as much as the rest. It was not merely a matter of salvaging her pride.

Alice helped her tease out the factions of the court, and the fractures where she might pry. Through Alice, Catherine got to know James, the Scots boy king who lived most his life as a hostage, and Joan Beaufort who he loved. Before the festivals of Catherine’s coronation had ended, Henry had been convinced to restore the lovers to each other and to Scotland. Not a bad victory to have won before spring.

But it wasn’t the victory she sought. Merely more evidence of her husband’s generosity—when he chose to be generous.

So when Alice came into her solar and sat close to Catherine, picking out strands of golden thread for her embroidery, Catherine bent her head to hear words spoken under the sound of the lutenist’s music.

She enjoyed needlework; it was the same in France as in England, it didn’t require speech in any language, and it gave her plenty of time for thought. Her ladies knew she didn’t like to be disturbed—except by Alice. That secured what privacy speaking quietly and in French could not.

“I spoke to one of the king’s servingmen,” Alice murmured now. “And found the chance to slip inside his privy chambers—the king’s, that is, not the man’s.”

Catherine smiled in response to her wink, and smoothed down a stich in the golden chain she made. The unicorn was complete, its glossy silver flanks silken under her fingers. The work of many long days. “And what did you see there?”

Besides his bedroom, she had not had much cause to see her husband’s quarters.

“They’re near as solemn as a village church.” Alice’s voice had become grave—opulence in kings and princes she well understood, and in queens like Catherine’s mother for that matter; its lack was almost supernaturally disturbing.

Kate frowned at it, herself.

“They’re comfortably appointed,” Alice said, “with rich hangings against the cold—but dull ones, nothing like what we have here.” She smiled proudly as she unpicked a knot in the stem of a ruby-red silk apple in the embroidered garden. “The man told me some of the furnishings are from the last king—all in the style of an army camp. The finest thing there, now, that was strange. It was even older than the rest.”

“It was?” Kate prompted.

“A painting of St. Sebastian, at the moment of his death.” Alice spoke in a hush, and with her head bowed low she crossed herself. Affected, Kate felt, by something in the painting which she could not describe—at least not in the presence of others, whether or not they might overhear. “From the deposed king.”

She took a deep breath, as if she could scent the significance of it. She’d heard many rumors of King Richard, his decadence and the cloud of favorites thick and glimmering as carrion flies that crowded his court. Henry had been a hostage there when he was young, before his father seized the throne. What influence had such an atmosphere had?

To be sure, if Henry had favorites at Windsor, Kate had not yet noticed them.

“And what about his habits?” she asked. Another thing she had directed Alice to seek out was information about the king and drink.

“Sober as a village church as well—when the priest has wandered off after drinking the jugs meant for consecration.”

No explanation, then, for her wedding night. Kate frowned and accepted another length of thread from Alice.

“They do say it was quite a different case in his Majesty’s youth,” Alice added.

Kate turned to her. “Was that so?”

“When he came to the throne he made a magnificent transformation.”

Magnificent. But how complete? “And before then?”

“He occupied himself with a dissolute crowd.” Alice’s lips pressed thin, in either a smirk or condemnation. Perhaps she strived for both at once. King or not, she expected only the best of a husband for her lady.

Yet to Kate, the revelation was almost a relief. Some answers were in store at last. "What manner of person did he consort with?” Another thought—“And do any remain at Windsor today?”

“Very few.” Alice shook her head. “If any. They came to bad ends, the lot. Dying in gutters, hanged from oaks. The bravest met their ends on French swords.”

“Are none of them left?”

Alice moistened her lips. Kate waited, breath bated, until she said, “Perhaps one or two has returned. My man, or should I say the servingman, he may prove willing to go into the city and ask—he knows the old tavern, or says he does…”

“Then have him look into it, by all means.”

Alice was frowning. “My lady, what possible bearing could this have?”

“Do you think men change so easily, Alice?” She caught her tongue between her own teeth, biting lightly. “Would you trust a man who did?”

“I… In that case, my lady, I will have him seek such persons out.”

“And if possible, I would like to hear their reminisces of my lord from their own mouths.”

Alice seemed too shocked to even ask the question that hovered obviously at her lips. Was her lady mad? Was her lady set in this course?

“Yes.” Catherine pulled tight the last strand of gold, completing the fine-linked chain leading to the collar around the unicorn’s neck. “If any of Henry’s old companions are left in London, I should like to meet them.”  


	2. Ruth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Who would have thought bedsport could turn out to be such a complicated process?

The figures standing at Ned Poins’ door are an old woman in a heavy cloak and behind her, a man in some household’s livery. At this time of night, he’d expect to see such a pair frantically seeking a physician, but there’s no way anyone can mistake these rooms for a learned medical’s quarters.

The servingman steps closer to the light of Ned’s tallow candle, and he can make out the livery in more detail. It’s familiar, though he’s never had the chance to see the royal colors quite so closely before.

Shock almost gags him.

Choking past it, his voice is rough. “Yes? What do you want with me?”

“Sir.” The woman’s words carry the hint of an accent—French, he identifies at once. “You will come with us.”

Their eyes meet, and he is surprised at the depths of suspicion in her dark glare. For a moment he is reminded, incongruously and not reassuringly, of his latest landlady.

A look at the man with her dismisses such thoughts, and suddenly keeping up with his arrears seems the least necessary thing for Ned Poins to concern himself with. The man is young, muscular beneath his fine livery, and dark like a Welshman. Ned revisits his judgment—the boy has a haughty bearing, more fitting to a squire than a servant.

Not reassuring, either. As he follows them into the street, Ned considers that he may never have to worry about debts again. Or perhaps he is being called upon to pay a debt, of sorts. A reckoning a very long time coming.

In his past are enough crimes, petty and larger, to hang a score of men. And though this hardly appears the typical arrest, they said Scrope thought he was attending an ordinary conference with his king before he was dragged from the chamber clapped in irons.

Evading the woman should be no problem at all, but the squire might give more trouble. It’s been a long time since Ned had to resort even to threateningly brandishing his blade—either at pilgrims a little too flush with funds for true piety, or other men flush with drink and lust for excitement or blood. As he considers the significance of the fact that the Welsh squire hasn’t disarmed him yet, it strikes Ned Poins just how little he cares. Living sober and solitary is cheaper than drinking alone, but no more engaging. He’s not certain it’s worth fighting for.

And it would almost be worth it to see that familiar face again. So he obediently follows the old woman and does his best to ignore the squire striding at his shoulder. They enter the palace through a servant’s door, and follow a labyrinth of corridors to the great oak doors of the audience chamber. The squire pushes one open, slowly, almost cautiously. This audience is not only private but tenebrous.

Swallowing hard, Ned steps inside.

As his eyes adjust to the dim illumination of a single rack of candles, their glow captured in the golden hair of the seated figure, and the crown on her brow—he stops short.

A woman is sitting on the King’s throne.

Her hands are folded in her lap, but as he watches she spreads them, claiming the throne’s arms and drawing herself up to her full, though diminutive, height. The full sleeves of her gown unfurl like wings. They are blue, as blue as the shadows, a dark contrast to the vivid crimson the king seems to favor in the draperies.

A few seconds too late, Ned Poins bows deeply to the queen. When he rises, their eyes meet. Hers are narrowed, and her lips are pressed thin but curling at their corners.

She tilts her head to address the space over his shoulder. “You may go, Alice, Owen.” She speaks English slowly, deliberately, with an air more of confidence than hesitation.

The door murmurs shut behind them.

She regards Ned for another moment in silence. Then she says, in French, “You expected someone else?”

“Yes.” There’s no point in lying to her, and she has control of this audience as easily as she’s taken control of her husband’s chamber. He can only hope she’ll deign to explain her reasons for it.

“My lord is occupied elsewhere this evening. Which is just as well, since it gives us a chance to speak.”

“Yes, madam.”

“You speak French well.”

At first he cannot tell whether she’s mocking him. Her eyes are narrowed again, but this time not with a smile. He’s being studied.

“Thank you, madam.”

“You spent time in my country?”

“Yes. I traveled after Hal—” The name slips out with alarming ease, betraying how close it rests on the surface of his mind. “The king’s,” he says. “After his majesty’s coronation.”

“When did you return home?”

“Just as the fighting began.” He resists the urge to fidget. “It made things—difficult.”

“Indeed,” the queen says aridly.

Ned meets her examining gaze again. “It would have been difficult to stay in England, too.”

“I had heard. Most of his friends from the…taverns—” she can’t hide the pause that suggests she was going to say something else, perhaps _gutter_ “—came to bad ends. Except you.”

Many of Henry’s friends in the court had also come to bad ends. Losing their heads like Scrope, or drowning in mud made of French dirt and their own blood. Ned wisely doesn’t say this. “I don’t think I had any special luck, madam. I simply didn’t trespass on him.”

“After he was crowned?”

Oh, that strikes too close. “I think he had no reason to complain of my behavior before, either.”

Catherine rests her cheek in her hand, elbow braced on the arm of the throne. She occupies that usurped seat with such ease, but he can’t imagine Henry would knowingly allow her there. Royal pride would not permit it. It would not be proper, and Henry has always been a proper king.

As a prince, well, it was a different story.

“If I may ask, madam, why…?”

“Exactly.” She drops her hand with a peal of delicate laughter. “To speak of the time before he was crowned, the time you knew him, is exactly why I’ve brought you here. You knew him well, didn’t you?”

“Perhaps.”

She doesn’t seem confused by the indeterminate answer, which she hears with a twitch of a smile. “Tell me, then. Tell me how you knew him.”

#

They were laughing when it happened. That’s all he remembers, years after the fact. They were laughing, high-spirited, hardly sober but not aware of it yet. This felt natural to them; this was how every evening was meant to end. Cups of sack and a joke.

It was usually on Falstaff, or Francis, or Mistress Quickly herself, or sometimes Doll if she had teased them too much and deserved revenge. Ned can’t remember the victim that night. Just the moment when he felt he had become one.

 They were up the stairs, and he was reaching for the door, looking over his shoulder to bid Hal good evening. Still laughing.

And then the laughter was caught behind his lips, and his lips were closed from the pressure of the prince’s mouth.

It had to be another joke, a prank or a trick. If it was a trick, perhaps Ned was falling for it, because he didn’t break the kiss. He let himself be drawn in. It fascinated him..

Hal didn’t kiss like a girl. Ned wasn’t certain whether he kissed like a boy, either—and for the first time he wondered if the prince had learned kisses on girls or boys. Or perhaps he had made them up himself: coaxing, greedy, drawing Ned’s tongue into his mouth, pulling back to trace Ned’s lips with the tip of his own tongue.

He didn’t taste like wine. Instead he had an oddly clean taste, washed free of anything, completely new.  Ned joined his exploration, found his hands tangling in the prince’s hair, holding it tight. Fingers pressed his chest, gripped his shoulder, steadying against him, caressing.

The stairs creaked—he had backed Hal up against the banister, but for a moment Ned’s heart stopped at the thought that someone might be approaching. He should never have let this get so far. And yet—Hal’s teeth grazed his lip, and in revenge Ned bit at him, drawing out a groan—and yet he couldn’t think how to stop it.

Until he did. Until he found a gap for breath, and found the chance to pull away, and when Hal would have followed him he forced the prince back with a ringing slap.

Neither of them were expecting it.

“What the hell are you thinking?” Ned asked. For his own part, thinking, _Tell me this was a joke, a prank, a trick. Explain how it got out of hand. We can laugh at this yet._

For his own part, thinking that he was asking exactly the right question, exactly the question that could be expected. As if he worked from a mummer’s script.

Hal crossed his arms and leaned back against the banister, smiling. His eyes darted to Ned’s and away. The red mark on his check spread, overtaking his face in a flush. As if the blow affected him as much as the kiss.

“You’re drunk,” Ned said.

“By this time of the night, I should hope so.”

“Well, you’re not attempting… _this_ every night.”

“And what does that tell you?” There, surely that was a prankish gleam in Hal’s eyes. But it vanished under the shadows of his downcast lashes. Not in coyness. He’d never seen such a thing in the prince before, but Ned almost thought it was shame. “I’m sorry, Ned. I didn’t intend to force you to defend your virtue.”

At last, the chance for the laughter he so desperately needed. But he had to force it out of his chest, pumping mechanically like an apprentice at a bellows. Acting like a mummer. “Well, at least I did a good job of it.”

“Yes,” Hal said, reaching up to stroke his own abused cheek. As his blush faded, the red from the strike remained.

“I didn’t mean to hit so hard.” Ned reached out apologetically—set his hand over Hal’s—felt the sudden shock as their fingers slid together, locked, and by them he pulled the prince close again.

#

“I’m not certain I should tell you, madam,” he says, bowing his head before the queen. She might think the gesture is apologetic, rather than guarding.

“Why not?”

He doesn’t answer.

He hears the murmur of heavy velvet shifting on the throne. He realizes he had spoken in English, and she answered in the same, the words precise but cushioned by her accent. Her next question comes in French.

“Do you think it would be a betrayal of him?”

That startles his head up. Catherine sits framed by her winglike sleeves, in her gown of celestial blue. Some have called her England’s angel, so beloved has she become in the short time since her crowning. But if there is divinity in her unyielding gaze, her piercing questions, the way she holds herself as if bearing a weight of armor—she is more like England’s patron, St. George, or that angelic saint Michael who could wrestle serpents down to hell.

Ned wonders if that would make him a worm. And if her cause is righteous, maybe he is wrong to oppose her. But she is not English, and her marriage to Henry has been one of convenience. There is no telling where her true loyalties lie.

“Would it be a betrayal, madam?” he asks her. “What should I tell you about your husband’s past? And why do you want to know?”

Because he is watching closely, he sees the ripple that passes over her shoulders, makes them lower without slumping, as if taking up an added weight.

Her voice is softer as she asks, “Did he ever make sounds? While fucking?”

#

What a relief if they could have fucked the way they shared their first kiss, in a blur of wine fumes and laughter, without stopping to think, to speak about it—at least not until afterwards. But, no such luck: if they were intoxicated enough for that then they wouldn’t have the wits to go through with it. Who would have thought bedsport could turn out to be such a complicated process?

But wine did make it less complicated to talk about. And so they drank, and talked about it plentifully. What started as a tactic for delay, to get up their courage, turned into a game that was oddly exciting in its own right. It began late in the morning after, when Hal had returned and let himself into Ned’s room and they sat talking with many a glance at the bed not six strides away. When that became too distracting, they moved down to the taproom, where their negotiations became cloaked in code and wordplay so that Ned was hardly certain of what they agreed to. He made Hal repeat himself with three different metaphors.

The gist of it was this: Hal wanted to receive from him.

Once he understood it, Ned accepted the offer perhaps a little too quickly, but then Hal had proposed it perhaps a little too eagerly. They let it be at that.

And he let it be the prince’s prerogative to decide when—when they’d had enough of talking, when low voices and laughter and barely perceptible squirming on the tavern bench became simply too much. Abruptly Hal rose and started for the stairs. Ned watched him go as if transfixed. His eyes followed the taper of Hal’s back, the bend of his long legs. That lithe body stopped in place on the stairs and swiveled, the prince turning to look at him. His smile, though small, was wicked; positively damnable. The gleam in his eyes was familiar, the one they took on whenever the prince proposed something outrageous. Doll had once called it, in a whisper that belied exaggeration, the sheen of reflected hellfire. As he caught Ned’s gaze, Hal quirked one eyebrow in clear invitation.

Ned rose, slapped down a last coin on the table, and followed his prince to his bedroom.

As the door closed behind them, they kissed again; deep kisses now, rich as the first time. Hal’s mouth was greedy and hot, and it demanded almost too much effort to break free long enough to offer one last condition.

“I want you astride me.”

“Oh?” That cocked brow again, more quizzical this time.

“So that—” He flushed, uncertain how to explain his thinking. He didn’t want to offer insult. But that was the reasoning behind his request, too—the thought intruded, _pinning the prince down, forcing his face in the mattress and his arse high, pounding into him_ —no, much better, this first time, for him to be in control of what Ned gave him.

Hal chuckled. “If you insist.” His hands closed over Ned’s, which held tight to his arm and shoulder. His chuckle was cut off as Ned squeezed harder, not consciously; Ned was unsure himself whether he sought reassurance or some other reaction. He heard Hal’s breath rasp, as if in pain or tempting pleasure.

Kneeling on the bed, they undressed quickly. Hal caught Ned watching him and grinned. A line of bare skin spread as he unbuttoned and opened his tunic. Most of it Ned had seen before, but in these circumstances everything seemed new. Virgin again.

He reached out and traced a line with his fingertip down from Hal’s collar bone, over the smooth muscle of his chest. The grin fell from Hal’s face. He leaned forward, closer, and as Ned pressed his palm out as if to catch him he felt the hammering of Hal’s heart.

They kissed again, this time an almost chaste brush of lips. Then Hal’s hands settled on Ned’s thighs and worked inwards, towards the laces of his hose. When Ned looked down, watching the ties unravel under Hal’s clever fingers, he saw that the prince had already untied his own, and they hung loosely at his groin, offering a glimpse—

Hal’s thumb pressed at flesh that had grown stiff underneath it, then stroked the length experimentally. Lust boiled through Ned’s body. He kept from thrusting into the prince’s hand, just barely, but his hips and his cock both rose against the touch. 

By the time he stripped off his tunic and they both had kicked off their hose, Ned felt harder than he’d ever been before. And it seemed so effortless, so…honest.

He lay back on the bed watching Hal, who still knelt at his feet. The thought of fucking him was at once the most natural and most exciting thing in the world. All their planning may have cemented its inevitability, but now Ned wondered how far back the roots of this plan reached—how long they had desired each other. Because the prince, nude, his shoulders slightly hunched as if to emphasize his kneeling nakedness and his thighs spread to reveal the one part of him Ned had never dared study so closely before, was utterly desirable.

“Come here.” Ned meant it as an invitation, but the words had a sharp edge of impatience. Hal’s shoulders jerked, but before Ned could decipher whether that meant offense or hidden laughter, he was being straddled, and kissed again.

This time he let his hands not only grasp the prince’s body but run over it, following the curve of his back. At the base of it, he went a little farther, tracing the warm cleft as Hal’s breath came and went in tremors against his mouth.

“In my purse,” Ned said. “There’s oil.” He’d fetched some off a madam down the street, a small flask of astringent-smelling unguent that she swore would be good for his unexplained purposes. That errand, binding him into this course of action, had taken some courage; even now his hands felt icy at the thought. If word ever got back just who his companion in this depravity was—

But Hal didn’t seem to notice if Ned’s hands were cold while he pushed back against them. Ned found the ring of muscle, circling it with the pads of his fingers. Hal gasped, and as his body jerked the head of his hard cock pressed Ned’s stomach, while Ned’s rod stroked the inside of his thigh.

“Fetch the oil,” Ned ordered, bringing his hand away with hidden reluctance. “Quickly.”

The command made Hal’s shoulders jerk again—and, if Ned did not imagine the momentary feeling, his cock. Then Hal had left his arms, sliding off the bed with fluid elegance, fetching his purse and rifling through it. No smart comments on its contents for a change—although aside from the flask and a few last pennies, it was empty. If his lack of funds enabled Hal to find the oil and return to him that much faster, Ned didn’t mind it.

Once the flask was in his hands, he slicked his fingers and put them back where they had been. Hal rose on his knees, letting Ned reach him from between his legs. Ned circled his opening again, enjoying the effect, watching Hal’s cock rise up red and rigid and muscles tremble all over his body.

At last, Hal swallowed; Ned watched the jump in his bared neck, the workings of his jaw. “Are you going to make me beg for it?”

“Ah…” His own hardness hadn’t lessened, and Ned thought that just a stroke to his own rod would send him spending. All this just from the first touch, the discovery, not even preparation.

And now Hal was speaking of _begging_ and the words couldn’t have been headier if they were kisses.

“Would you?” Ned asked. “Would you beg?”

He let his tracing fingertip press in for a moment, felt it pushed and then drawn further as the prince trembled. “Most shamelessly,” Hal said.

Ned applied more oil, then more of his finger to the task. He didn’t stop for thought until he felt the tightness embrace his second knuckle. It had gone in more easily than he’d feared, but not nearly as fast as his body now wanted.

Hal’s lips went white beneath the pressure of his teeth. He seemed to be biting back a sound, and his eyelids fell shut in concentration, as if he judged the taste of a new wine.

Ned started to draw out, and the sound that escaped Hal’s lips was a soft moan.

He pressed in again, deeper, stroking gently, and the hands braced on his chest curled until the short fingernails scraped Ned’s skin. It felt more like a caress than pain.

Deeper again, and a little faster, and a little less gentle. He’d added so much oil that some dribbled down his wrist; it made things easier, at least. His fingertip found something firm, which he traced the round shape of in curiosity, and at the inner pressure Hal gasped sharply.

“Should I do that again?” Ned asked.

“Please.”

Once he had begged for that, Hal seemed unable to stop.

“Please—oh, that’s good, Ned, that’s _right—_ please don’t stop, please keep doing—I want you deeper. Can you add another—” Instead of rising on the question, his voice dropped, almost a whimper as Ned slid two fingers into him. He didn’t have time for half a dozen strokes before the stream of words began again, “Please, can you—again—can you, will you, I want. I want you. Please don’t stop.”

“I’m not going to stop,” Ned said, at once amused and a little alarmed by the desperation of the request. And fired by it—nobody had _ever_ asked for him so openly, so eagerly.

“Please, I want you.” Hal’s hand slid down Ned’s belly, brushed his cock.

Ned went for the flask to slick himself one last time. At the loss of his fingers Hal winced.

Ned stroked himself roughly, with such lack of finesse that it drew him back from the edge of climax. A spot of good fortune, in the circumstances. When he was gleaming slick—from the sharp-scented whore’s unguent and from the pearly stuff beading at the head of his cock—he reached for Hal again.

The prince spread his legs. “Please—want—”

The begging didn’t stop until Ned grasped his hip with one hand, his own cock with the other, and guided them together and in one sharp movement, reared up and pierced him.

The connection was a shock to both their bodies; he felt it crash through them. Sweet, hot pressure, muscle yielding and grasping, nails scratching and breath catching. He could feel a pulse hammering where they were joined, or perhaps two pulses, both of their hearts pounding as though in alarm. Ned lay there like a man caught by a wave, disoriented, trying to make sense of the thing—until he realized he didn’t need sense. His body didn’t need to know where it lay or what had happened. By instinct it was moving, his hips rolling in motions that might be objectively small but moved them like tidal swells. And then Ned raised his eyelids, and he looked up to see Harry, the prince of Wales, impaled on his cock. And given over to the sensation most shamelessly.

As Ned kept moving, the prince’s mouth fell open. But he had stopped talking. He simply made sounds instead.

Ned was not unfamiliar with his prince’s usual sounds. Hearing them had long been an easy fact of their friendship, neither shameful nor even prurient. Every time Hal took a bawd up to these rooms, the entire house echoed with it. Generally, Hal sounded louder than the whore—and the whore, Ned came to notice, often sounded quieter than she commonly was. That was the thing. Lower, softer mewling, or rougher cries, not meant to carry but with no strength to spare for muffling them—those were the sounds of genuine pleasure. Lustful and not nearly as lusty as the shouts and whooping meant for advertisement of the trade.

And Hal’s moaning above him was not intended as advertisement, either. Not this once.

The realization almost put Ned off a stroke, confounded. This, then, was something only he had, of all the people Hal had bedded. This genuine, helpless, soft, needy sound.

Ned knew he was very close to coming now, his existence a tunnel dropping to climax, and there waiting at the end of it, Hal. Ned had sometimes seen him with his bawds, and never had he looked like this. His head had fallen back, his neck bared, hips not grinding with sharp jerks but flowing in response to Ned’s thrusts. Ned gripped those hips, pulling hard as if to force Hal down farther onto his cock, again and again. Hal’s moan cut off sharply, then started again, higher and shorter, almost a cry. His hands pushed against Ned’s chest as he rose, then let himself be pulled down, and at some point either rising or falling he fell apart, coming with a sound that seemed to hold pain as much as pleasure, a sound as desperate as a prayer for forgiveness. But there was nothing to forgive him for, and if Ned had apologies to make they went unsaid, too, because his own climax was violent and wordless and very, very soon.

#

Perhaps, Ned thinks, the queen is only asking about the whores.

He looks up at Catherine. He knows his glance is accusatory, suspicious, but then so is her question. Suspicious in both ways. He wonders if they both would hang should all their secrets ever come out. 

“What was that, your majesty?” It could be a chance for her to change her mind, change the direction of this questioning.

“He’s always silent in my bed,” Catherine says without meeting his gaze. Instead she seems to study the embroidery on the hem of her sleeve. “Once he’s inside me. Before, he might talk—say my name, answer questions, laugh, jest.” Does she smile, or is that a cruel trick of the shadows? “He is kind. But once he is within me, he is silent. Except… once. Once it was different. Perhaps it was the drink.”

“Perhaps.” Speech seems less risky than leaving her waiting for an answer. But what answer does she expect from him?

“What would draw a word from him, when you knew him?” Catherine’s voice barely trembles. “Wine? A trick of the woman? Or…”

She stands and takes two paces towards him. Until she does, Ned hasn’t realized that he’s been very slowly backing away from her. She’s a small woman, just reaching his shoulder. She is not smiling now; though a light blush touches her cheeks, her skin is otherwise ashen. She should not terrify him so much.

And he has a moment of pity, thinking there is no reason that she should be so miserable, either.

“Listen,” she almost whispers. Ned inclines to her, obedient. “If you share what you know of my husband, it will be a great kindness to me. Perhaps to him, too. You know better than I.” Her lip twists, a smile without joy, a sneer without open menace. “You need not fear any consequence of what you say to me in this room. I need to know.”

“And you think I know?”

“Yes,” she says. “I do.”

She speaks so simply, so softly, that he cannot lie to her. He steps back, so that Catherine does not need to tip her head at such a severe angle to see his face, and folds his arms. “He sometimes made sounds. He didn’t always mean them.” He takes another breath. “With whores—”

“Had you seen him with whores?”

“Yes.”

“Did you ever share a woman with him?”

He doesn’t dare ask where she got such an idea. “Yes,” he answers honestly. “Once or twice.”

She nods as if this is nothing unexpected. “And were there times—” that strange, empty smile appears again, pulling cheeks painted with a spreading flush “—where you simply dispensed with the woman?”

Ned Poins stares at the queen. “Why would you suspect such a thing?”

He had thought the king lived like a monk. Catherine’s unexpected confession about their marriage bed seems to support that. A kind and silent lover indeed. And that only to his wife, surely? Has there ever been any faltering, with anyone? Any chink to that righteous armor—except—

“Scrope,” he breathes.

Catherine nods. “The traitor. Everyone in this court knows that Henry loved him. A very few of them know how.”

She’d got one of those very few to tell her the truth. Ned thinks of the squire who’d let him in, the Welshman Owen. And the oddly stern Frenchwoman. Catherine has her allies in the court. “But what makes you think my relationship with him was anything like that?”

“Indeed. After all, you survived. But then, you said you did not trespass on him.”

“Are you asking me to now?”

“I said you need fear no consequence of what you tell me now.”

“Consequences to myself, or—”

She speaks on as if she hadn’t heard him. “It’s a mortal sin, so it’s said. But what man does not commit mortal sins? Killing is a mortal sin, too.” She clasps her hands as if in momentary prayer. “That is for God to forgive, and not for me to shirk from. At least with this particular sin my husband has hurt himself more than anyone else.”

An odd thing passes between them, more than the meaning of the words. It lies in the stress she lays on them—on _hurting_.

Has she been hurt? But she described her husband as kind.

Does she think Henry has been hurt, then? Beyond Scrope’s betrayal, by something perhaps more essential, even more intimate?

“Yes,” Ned says. “Perhaps so. But at the time I knew him he would have said it was worth the pain.”

“Why?”

A question he has asked himself too often for too long. “Madam, I’m no longer sure I’ve ever understood any of his motives.”

“Neither am I,” Catherine says.

Ned drops his gaze to the flagstones. “He put me aside. All of us, all his old friends.”

“Yes, I know.” Velvet whispers on stone as she steps forward. “I’m not envious of you, Master Poins.”

“The things I can tell you—they may no longer hold true.”

“Perhaps we shall find out, if we share what we know.”

Ned nods to her. It’s not pity he feels towards her, prompting him to yield. If anything, it’s sympathy. “In that case, madam, will you tell me something of what’s passed between you?”

“It’s simple. He courted me. He conquered France. He claimed my country by claiming me.”

“Even in bed?”

“…No,” she says at last. “If anything, that night seemed to happen the other way around.” Her flush deepens until her fair skin looks like it has been struck.

But Ned is remembering a different blow, falling on a different cheek. “The first time we kissed, I slapped him,” he says.

He may be imagining the queen’s smile.

“Not because he angered me,” he adds quickly, “though I was taken by surprise. It was just that I felt I _should_. He was, as you say, tempting me into a mortal sin.” Irony’s bitter tang coats his tongue. “The slap dissuaded neither of us. And after the first time—I’m not sure we were…kind, madam. Not gentle. I was not gentle to him. He didn’t want me to be.”

Catherine goes back to the throne, but rather than claiming it again she sinks on the steps to the dais. Her chin rests on her folded hands. “Thank you. Please, tell me—”

“Yes.”

#

The next time they lay down together, Hal hooked his legs between Ned’s, wrapped an arm tight on his shoulders and rolled them over.

“Yes,” he said with triumphant satisfaction, settling beneath Ned. “Like this. I want to feel your whole body, not just your cock.”

Knuckles sinking into the soft mattress, Ned caught him by the nape of his neck and shook him gently, like a disobedient puppy. “Well, you have no cause to complain about what _just_ my cock managed.”

“No, not in the least.” His head lolled back, not even trying to break free of the grip.

“The thing is—” Ned got his knees under him, pressing against Hal’s ribs as he knelt up. “I’m not sure you could _withstand_ much more than that.”

The prince gaped at him in pure affront. Ned resisted the urge to smirk back at him. He kept his face stern, uncertain if he was expressing concern or making a threat.

Hal shook his head. “I’m not sculpted from sugar, Ned. I can bear a little rough handling.”

Ned licked his lips. “Are you certain?”

He reached between Hal’s thighs to find him already swelling in his hose. Ned grasped him there, rubbing through the cloth. As the prince’s legs spread, he squeezed harder, almost pinching.

“Will I make you beg again?” Ned asked.

Hal ground wordlessly up into his hand. For a few moments Ned permitted it, with a twist of his wrist letting his palm roll over the head of Hal’s cock, feeling wetness bead through linen, his own rod growing heavy at the sensation. Then with another grasp he put an end to the motion. He pressed his free hand to Hal’s hip, holding him down as he toyed with the prince’s member at his own pace. Waiting to make him beg some more.

When Hal spoke, it was through gritted teeth. “That’s— _very—good_. But it isn’t—quite enough—”

Ned snorted at the impertinence. And slapped him for it. It was a light smack, playful, just strong enough to turn his cheek on the pillow. Hal sank into it. Ned watched him drop—eyelids heavy, lips parted, all the tension and strength in his young, lithe body seeming to drain away. When Ned drew one finger along his cock, letting the nail scratch over the curve of its swollen head, the prince whimpered.

“Let’s get you undressed,” Ned told him.

He stripped Hal of his hose while the prince flung off his jacket and tunic. His bared skin was splotched with red, a flush spreading over his chest.

“You want this,” Ned said at the evidence of his lust—in some way even more obscene, more intense than his erect cock pressing urgently against Ned’s hand.

“Yes, of course I do.”

“You want _me_.”

He pushed Hal’s legs up and aside, kneeling between them. He let his fingers trail over warm skin, smooth on the insides of Hal’s thighs, unexpectedly soft over taut muscle.

Grinning, Hal hitched his hips to meet the exploring touch. “Don’t you want me, too?”

Ned cupped his balls, bringing out a low moan. He drew them up and exposed Hal to his gaze. He licked a fingertip and traced the rim of his hole, making Hal shiver. “Yes,” he said. “Of course I do.”

Ned felt his own blush heating his face. For three days afterwards they hadn’t spoken of it. For three days Hal had greeted him as in older times, friendly but hardly… _flirtatious_. The prince could never be _cool_ , but he treated Ned with only a pleasant, impersonal, high-spirited heat. An arm thrown over his shoulders and as easily withdrawn. Eye contact that never lingered and was sometimes broken by a wink, meaningless.

It took Ned another full evening to notice how it had changed.  How Hal was constantly making invitations to start some unnamed mischief. The grin, the gleam that heralded a forthcoming trick—when no trick ever came. Hal was well-behaved and constantly on the cusp of behaving quite badly. It was as if he had run out of words for his proposals. Which, in a way, he had.

It took Ned far too long to realize that the prince’s hand alighting on his arm, or their fingers brushing around a deck of cards or cup of sack, did in fact linger—if not in time, in their own shared consciousness of the touch.

_You want me._

But how could either of them say it aloud down there?

Up here, though—no need for further pretenses. No tricks, Ned thought as he pressed his finger to the first knuckle inside his prince. As he heard him moan and whisper against the pillow, “ _Want—you—”_

“Yes,” Ned said. “Really, truly.” Hal’s body was too tight for him to move within, and the angle wasn’t very good. With a parting stroke, Ned withdrew his hand.

Hal raised his head to look at him. His expression was stricken, so bereft Ned snorted in muffled laughter. The sound seemed to reassure his prince.

Ned took the oil flask from his purse, still at the waist of his laced hose. He should discard those soon—but other matters seemed more urgent. “Give me that pillow,” he ordered Hal, who obeyed with alacrity.

Ned pushed the pillow under Hal’s hips and let him rest like that, legs parted and waiting while he stripped.

He slicked his hands and grasped his own cock. Blood surged at the touch, the first he’d had all week—he only remembered the absence now. Since the last time he’d fucked Hal, he’d lived celibate even of his own palm. As if nothing else was worth bothering with.

But now—his fingers closed tighter, then slid to the base and squeezed there, holding the edge off—he had the sudden need to be gripped, surrounded… He poured most of the remaining oil over his fingers. They’d need it to ease the way, both of them. 

Hal’s groan as Ned reached into him held all the satisfaction in the world. He didn’t beg, not at this. He lay perfectly pliant, spread wide, sometimes moaning softly at the sensation as Ned’s fingers fucked him open.

The ring of muscle closed tight around the bases of two fingers, and then when Ned crooked them, as if beckoning, Hal’s entire body trembled, inside and out. Producing such a strong reaction with so small a gesture was startling, and addictive. Ned stroked again, pushed in and then out. He moved almost idly, teasingly, and for now, slowly. He maintained the rhythm even when Hal keened, a sharp and needy sound that startled both of them.

“Like that?” Ned asked, with more indolence, neither expecting nor needing an answer.

His fingers pressed deep, and this time Hal pushed his fist to his mouth and bit down to keep quiet.

His sounds were like nothing he had ever made with the whores. They would raise questions if anyone heard them or recognized who voiced them. A long _if,_ Ned thought, tracing an intimate circle and studying the rise and fall of a whimper it produced. The prince’s throat jerked with a sharp inhalation, another smothered cry.

Hal’s hips stuttered forward into the empty air. His cock was straining, all but gleaming red. The hand he wasn’t biting reached for his thigh, scratched there, trying to hold off—but Ned made him give in, teased him just a stroke more than he could endure, and then just as Hal reached for himself Ned caught him by the wrist.

And he laughed.

“P-please,” Hal said, stammering over the first sound, lips fluttering. His tongue seemed no more able to find purchase than his cock, and Ned laughed again to seem him helpless at both ends. It was rare, and this once it was thanks to _him_.

He wanted to stretch out and savor this infernal miracle, but he too had his limits. Hal didn’t struggle against the hold on his wrist, but his very yielding obedience sent another spike of lust through Ned.

“Please what?” he asked.

“P-plea…” The words came out garbled as Ned crossed his fingers inside him. Ned smiled, feeling no conscious malice but instead an almost innocent excitement. _He_ was doing that, to Hal, and Hal was…

“You love this, don’t you?” He added a third finger, pushed it in with the others over the course of a long, smooth stroke, and it was almost more than either of them could take.

“ _Please,_ ” Hal groaned.

“Please what?” And on the question Ned’s own voice trembled. For all he enjoyed playing the prince’s tormenter, he found he needed the answer: as permission, and as confirmation, the seal and proof of Hal’s honest desperation. “What do you want from me?”

He wanted the answer so much that he, for a mercy, held still for Hal to give it.

“Please fuck me. Please, Ned, fuck me now.”

He had to lean close to hear the words. They were soft but clear, and at the sound of them his own throat ached in sympathy. Touched by a tender impulse, he kissed Hal’s open mouth before pulling back to pour the rest of the oil liberally over his cock.

He entered with a shove so forceful it nearly displaced Hal off the pillow. At another time it might have sent them both laughing, but Ned was impatient now, once he had at last given himself permission to take what he wanted. With a muffled curse he gripped Hal’s hips hard enough to bruise and pulled him back into position. And held him there as he thrust sharply into him.

As Hal wanted.

It was what he wanted, too; so exactly what he wanted that Ned worried he would finish too soon. But although it felt _good_ , and although his body snapped with the force of each stroke, and inside Hal his cock glided effortlessly, gripped just _right_ but welcomed all the way—for all that, it wasn’t quite enough. The angle still felt awkward, kneeling over Hal, watching him writhe and seeing the unnamable expressions crossing his face—a distraction. Ned could gladly watch him forever, or fuck him forever, but doing both at once made him feel scraped raw.

If only the whores could do the fucking for him—but what woman could they ever hire to take Hal apart like this?

Frustration with the absurd, mad scenario spurred Ned to another violent thrust. Hal cried out, sharp enough that this time Ned feared he’d done something wrong. But just as he was about to slow, Hal cried out again. The flush spread high up his neck and across his cheeks.

“You love—this, too—don’t you?” Ned asked.

“Yes. Ned, _yes._ ” For a moment he seemed about to beg some more, but the next thrust replaced his words with a whimper.

Ned leaned down to kiss him again, as much of him as he could reach, catching that exposed throat between his lips. He buried one hand in the prince’s long hair and was startled at its softness. It was warm and faintly damp from sweat.

Hal moaned as he pulled at it, his breath hot and wet and seemingly right in Ned’s ear.

God, it was too much. Ned had to pull back, and as he did inspiration struck. Inspiration and a dark desire, an image that had haunted him, too obscene to be openly entertained. But he could now. He _could_.

He’d seen enough to suspect Hal wouldn’t at all mind it.

“All’s well,” he murmured as he pulled out. His fingers gently stroked the line of Hal’s jaw, brushed over his lips as if to hold in that disappointed sigh. “Just be patient.”

He reached down and pinched the curve of the prince’s arse. “And turn over.”

Hal looked more abject, lying facedown on the bed. Ned traced along the line of his backbone and his thighs parted, strain trembling through them.

Then Ned pressed the head of his cock against him and the prince’s whole body surrendered, relaxing. Like when Ned at slapped him. At the thought, he smacked sharply, reddening one flat cheek. Hal’s hips jerked at the blow, not, he thought, in an attempt to avoid it. The next strike made him groan, a sound too loud, too urgent to be muffled by the mattress.

“Like that?” Ned asked, rubbing over the flesh he’d abused. He felt heat rising against his palm.

Hal’s head bobbed. Ned could make out some of his profile; he was as flushed above as below, his eyes tightly shut.

“If you like it, ask me for another.”

“Yes.” Hal swallowed. “Yes, please.”

It didn’t feel like cruelty, when he begged for it so wonderfully. He took Ned’s blows like he had taken his fingers, desperate for them.

Ned was glad his own face was hidden; he couldn’t imagine the expression it bore. Did he look as flushed, as _wanting_?

His hand stung before it was over; he reddened both cheeks to the hue of spilled wine before at last burying his cock between them.

He reached for Hal’s hair again, threading his fingers through it, pulling with each thrust. With his other hand he captured Hal’s wrist and held it down. When he caught Hal reaching with his other hand for his cock, he released his hair just long enough to seize both hands. He pinned them over Hal’s head, and the sight of that—of such wanton _helplessness_ —made him forgive the way the prince’s hips ground beneath his own, trying to fuck against the pillow for some relief.

Whatever sound Hal made, he made against the mattress.

When Ned was done—when pure virile pleasure had pooled in him and let loose in an annihilating flood, when the shock of it at last faded and he drew himself out, when he released Hal’s arms and the prince shifted, not quite rolling over—he saw the ring Hal’s teeth had made in the coarse cloth, the wet mark of his mouth. He wondered if, next time, he should produce a gag.

Or if he could find other uses for that hot, wet, desperate mouth.

It was an intriguing idea. Ned toyed with it as he gently turned Hal, examining him. The marks of his fingers were fading from his arse and hips, and as their eyes met, Hal smiled, almost shyly. His cock was still erect; Ned had fucked him too roughly for him to come.

“I can make that up to you,” he said aloud.

Hal frowned at him, puzzled. “Don’t have to—” But when Ned’s fingers circled his cock, Hal sighed and let him do as he willed.

A jolt passed through him as Ned licked the swollen head. The long, pale, fucked-limp body cracked like a whip, startled to alertness. Ned grinned, then kept licking, tasting the liquid beading beneath his tongue. Like salt and marchpane mixed with something harder to identify; the taste was too strange to be either pleasant or unpleasant, and was secondary anyway to the fact that it was _Hal’s_ taste. And Ned was wringing just a few more of those helpless, pleading sounds from him. Not long now, he promised silently as he stretched his mouth wide and took him in.

No, Hal wasn’t made of sugar after all; he’d have come apart with far more ease, melting sweetly. He wasn’t sweet, and Ned was unused to this and made mistakes, clumsy and toothily careless. That proved its own manner of fun, though, and so he kept it up, even when he felt the thick head of Hal’s cock knock against his back teeth and had to fight past it for breath.

“Ned,” Hal groaned. “Ned—” Then, with sudden urgency, “Ruth, Ned, _ruth_.”

A hand cupped the back of his head, tugged at his hair. Ned let it draw him back.

“Show a little pity, Ned,” Hal said, freed of his mouth. He laughed shakily and smiled. Ned wondered if he was self-conscious at his first choice of words: _ruth_ meant more than pity, it meant sorrow, it meant compassion, it meant regret. Or perhaps Hal had picked an overly strong word deliberately—exaggerating to hide his true feeling, begging too much as if to hide the fact that he was begging at all.

 “A little.” It was as close to an apology as Ned ever came. He took the prince’s cock and stroked it more gently—with almost rueful gentleness—until Hal came at last, spilling over Ned’s hand without a sound.

#

Ned hears the words from his mouth as if from a stranger’s, expecting at any moment to be stopped—to be commanded, ordered, begged to stop. But there is only silence from the foot of the throne, deep silence that drinks in sound, drinks in his words. Listening.

The queen listens, and she does not ask him, out of ruth, to stop telling her the truth about her husband.

And so, out of ruth, he keeps talking.


	3. Ruthlessness

 “What else did you do?” The candles have burned low, and as the queen leans forward at the edge of the dais she comes into their light. Her eyes are wide, with something almost feverish burning in their depths. Excitement.

Ned's heart beats behind his ribs like a bird fluttering in a cage. His own eyes are likely as bright as hers. With distress, with anxiety, or with excitement. “Your majesty?”

“He let you be cruel to him, without considering it a trespass.”  

He nodded. “To a measure.” He licks his lips, crosses his arms. “I’m not certain if, to him, it was cruelty.”

“I understand.” Then, startlingly, she laughs. “Perhaps I should not be so sure that I do.” Catherine cocks her head. “You made him beg for your mercy.”

Made him beg for plenty of things. Ned swallows hard. “Sometimes. Rarely.”

“Did you want to?”

This queen’s questions always take him aback. “I never aimed to, madam. That would…seem cruel.”

Even if not cruelty, what he had done with the prince, _to_ the prince, was mortal sin. Yet Catherine has barely batted an eyelash at talk of shame and sodomy. What captured her attention instead is this—and it hasn’t brought her condemnation.

“It was what Hal wanted,” he says simply. “To be shown—roughness, ungentleness. And I was happy to give it to him.”

He’s slipped into English with those last words, as he had here and there throughout his account. The queen has seemed able to follow along regardless. That doesn’t mean he is always understood—now, even as she nods, a line forms between her eyebrows. He wonders which part confuses her.

“Tell me what it felt like.” Her hands disappear into her full sleeves, then reappear, fussing. She speaks in a low voice, and in English. “What he wanted, what it made you happy to give him. Tell me what you did.”

“Yes, madam.” She doesn’t beg; even in desperation, he thinks, she would demand her due. And she asks for nothing he will not willingly share.

For her sake. For the pleasure of revisiting it.

Because sitting in Henry’s hall, talking about their shared history, is the closest Ned’s come to having him in years. Already he’s dreading the hour his words will run out.

#

It was evening, with a raucous suppertime crowd storming downstairs, their laughter and gossip and calls for more ale drowning out any other sounds. The sun, in setting, stained the smoke and grime above London red, and its beams that fought through the chinks in the window shutters were red, too. The room was dim, but Ned didn’t need to see to know how Hal shuddered beneath him, to know how the prince’s body yielded to his, or to know he was hurting him.

His belt was wrapped around the prince’s neck, buckled at the tightest notch. Ned had looped the other end of it around his hand, and as his fist rested on the mattress it drew Hal’s head down. Now Ned pulled back, forcing his head and body up and back to meet the next thrust. He grasped Hal by the hair to steady him.

Hal’s moan was hoarse, trapped deep in his throat. Even if the tavern downstairs were as silent as a chapel, no one could have heard him.

Ned missed the begging, but this had its compensations—holding the reins of the prince as he rode him. Poised between absolute control of the other man and a strange loss of control for himself, an urge towards savagery that he resisted but didn’t fight. It was as intoxicating as the contents of the wineskin Hal had tossed aside when Ned ordered him to strip. Spilled wine made a bloody pool on the floor, dark in the red light. Evidence of how Hal had surrendered himself utterly. To _him._

Ned closed his eyes and saw red, felt submerged in red heat. It wasn’t like anger; it wasn’t like any violence he’d ever threatened, no sin he’d ever committed. But it was liquid pleasure and raw power; it was everything he’d never dared to want, all offered, all given freely, all his.

He sped his strokes, feeling his climax approaching. Hal made another sound, weak and needy. Ned smacked his arse hard, and the next whimper sounded more grateful.

“Good,” Ned murmured, unable to say more, unable to keep from saying this much. “So good, Hal.”

Beneath the slap of skin on skin he barely heard Hal’s answering sigh. Yet he felt it, like the caress of fingers down to the base of his spine. He saw Hal’s expression in profile, hungry, transcendent. Hal wanted this. Hal wanted him.

After they had undressed he’d found Hal on his knees. A moment of silence passed between them, and without questioning it, Ned had pressed his cock to Hal’s lips. His hand tangled in the prince’s hair as he sucked him in. That mouth was as wet and hot and eager as Ned had imagined. He would have spent there if he allowed it, if he let Hal’s tongue slide over him and let himself thrust deep and sharp towards his throat until release found him. If he hadn’t taken Hal’s shoulders and pushed him back, then pulled him up to the bed.

Even the thought of it now made his balls ache, a swelling tenderness heralding the familiar end. This time Ned’s climax came like a jump into space, a sharp rise and an endless fall, sinking over Hal’s body, his head pillowed between the prince’s hitching shoulder blades.

Ned reached under him and stroked his cock with a few firm twists. His other hand braced on the mattress again, jerking Hal’s head by the leash. That made the rod in his hand start, and Ned gripped and pulled almost harshly as Hal’s release pulsed over the mattress. He was still buried in him, his cock all but aching in the aftermath of pleasure but still enjoying the tight embrace. 

When he did at last pull out, they both seemed bereft for it. Ned started to unwrap the end of the belt from around his palm. Midway through, he stopped. He tugged, drawing Hal nearer to him, and the prince obediently curled against his side.

Ned stroked his hair back from his face, both shining with sweat. Hal settled in the crook of his arm as he combed through the strands, separating and softening them. He worked down to the nape of Hal’s neck, then let his stroking fingers travel over his shoulders and spine. He lay with the prince, petting him like a dog, and Hal allowed it. Perhaps because it was humiliating to be treated like a prize bitch, part and parcel of the experience Hal was seeking; but it was also a rare chance for Ned to show him a kindness.

Ever since begging his ruth, the prince didn’t seem to want his pity. Ned knew this, understood it to an extent—knew his roughness was exciting, his demands were a gift, and Hal had other things to beg of him—but he wondered if his gentleness would be the worst offense of all. If it would unman Hal more than everything else.

Ned was distracted from his thoughts by the tacky sound of Hal’s tongue moving in his dry mouth. His lips were pale and chapped. That was from taking his cock—and Ned smiled at the thought, even as he moved to make up for it, rising to fetch the wine.

“Ned?” The prince’s voice dropped low; it was the kind of tone apprentices used when tugging their forelocks. But mixed with the deference was potent desire, almost desperate.

“Thought you’d like a drink.” He shook the skin, hearing a slosh deep in its belly. “There’s a little bit left.”

When he sat down again, Hal flowed around him, curling close. Taken aback, Ned wrapped an arm over his shoulders to provide the needed embrace. He held the skin around to Hal’s lips, but couldn’t tip it at the right angle for the remaining wine to flow. Hal’s chin was tucked down and turned towards Ned’s chest. His need for Ned’s skin seemed greater than his thirst.

“Here.” Ned caught Hal’s jaw and brought it up. But inspiration struck, so he poured the wine into the cup of his fingers and soon had the prince lapping from his hand. As Hal sucked the last drops off his palm with a lewd sound, Ned caught the familiar gleam returning to his eyes.

“All right?” he asked, and only when Hal nodded did he undo the belt buckle. 

**#**

Ned pauses in his telling when Alice comes into the chamber. He sits on the dais, on a level with Catherine but with the width of the throne between them. The French lady exchanges a glance with her queen and nods without revealing an expression. She replaces several of the tapers on the candle branch above Catherine, then silently removes herself.

All the while, Catherine studies him. Or perhaps her gaze looks past him, to some different distance.

“All that, you did for him?” she murmurs.

 “Does it seem like so much?”

She pulls the long end of one sleeve, coiling it over her fingers. “You did what he wanted. Did he ever do what _you_ wanted?”

Ned has to laugh. “I wasn’t his servant, madam. Not hardly. Nor was he mine.”

She raises an eyebrow at that. Ned swallows, remembering his description of Hal’s voice—low and submissive, if not quite subservient. And open, so open to his will.

“I had what I wanted of him, I assure you.”

Catherine nods, still studying that vista over his shoulder. Seemingly unsatisfied with what she finds there, she says, “Just lying there taking a cock isn’t all that much.”

Ned blinks; it’s the most obscenity he’s heard from her mouth since she asked him about Hal’s noises while _fucking._ The quiet vehemence of the words also startles him, until he thinks about it. He blushes deeply.

He asks, “Is that what you do in his bed?” The question comes without bitterness, and he intends no insult. But he is suddenly intensely curious. Not all for Catherine’s sake.

Hal changed, and he’s curious to see what Henry is like now.

She smiles and ducks her head, but not before he catches her eyebrows arched in a wry expression. “Nothing like the way he did in yours.”

Ned catches a chuckle at the back of his throat and nods. Neither of them is bitter, or envious, it seems.

“But it’s strange to me to think he would enjoy being so—passive. No, not strange.” She corrects herself, then repeats in French, “Not so strange at all. At Troyes—”

“That first night together. When he spoke to you. Or, ah, sounded…”

“Perhaps he went back to a lot of old habits, that night. Before discarding them.”

“Why do you think he would do that?” Ned asks.

“Are you suggesting it’s because of me?” She’s still smiling, and he cannot tell how brittle that smile is.

“Hal could be changeable,” he says. “Even as a prince. And now, as a king—and with you—”

“It would be beneath his dignity for him to lie passive under a woman.”

“Maybe,” Ned says. But he remembers the whores—just the handful of them, really, but none of them ever had anything to complain of. Hal’s virility never lent itself to roughness, which, Ned reflects ruefully, is more than he can say for himself. And he remembered his own discovery from the sounds drawn from the prince’s mouth, helplessly for once. Because Hal never went to a whore’s bed the way he did to Ned’s. It was as if he had to force himself to go to them, to act the man with them. To give them something to gossip about, and just the right kind of gossip, the kind of shame that to a young man was better than praise.

A worthy performance—in all senses.

But he never had to perform it in Ned’s bed.

“It might be beneath his dignity to submit to a woman,” Ned says, “but I don’t think it would be beyond his pleasure.”

Catherine looks sharply at him.

“So what _have_ you done with your husband?” Ned asks her, brave now. “And what more do you want?”

She licks her lips. “It wasn’t his submission I asked about, merely his passiveness. I know he can _yield_. He gave himself to me—” she speaks the words fiercely, but with conviction—“and that morning, even as he was rejecting old habits, if that is what he did, even then he debased himself more than I would ever have asked of him. He sees to my pleasure. And I took… _such…_ pleasure in having him kneel over me, his royal tongue between my legs, the one place he couldn’t possibly deceive me.” This time, her laughter is bitter. “I don’t think he understood all that I wanted, because if he did he could never have given it. Forget his _dignity_. It would have been…foolish.”

“Dangerous?” Ned asks softly.

“Do you really think he’s in any danger from me?”

He shakes his head. Though he wonders if he has also misunderstood, been foolish. This French queen of England has proven to have unplumbed depths.

But Hal was never in any danger from him, although no one would ever have believed it, and for the sake of that he wants to extend her the same consideration. Trust, even.

“I want to be something more than a dish for his tongue to sample, however pleasant that may be. And more than some hole for his cock—for a—” Here she breaks off, though Ned can finish for her. She’s the mother of Henry’s heir, or will be; her hand and womb are prizes in the treaty as much as any castle.

But she’s also a woman, and Ned doesn’t for an instant think she speaks of pure politics.

“What do you want him to be?” he asks her. “How else do you want to take him?”

“Tell me what he was for you. Tell me what he did for you.”

#

That evening in the tavern Hal made one of his frequent attempts to outdrink Falstaff. Though hopelessly outmatched—and not rescued this time by the old man running out of credit—he made a brave show of it. They had an audience, and the prince held the favor of most of them, until a cacophony at the door announced the entrance of a crowd of rowdy apprentices. Regulars called greetings to each other, and a waving arm jostled Hal as he refilled both mugs with ale. He sucked spilled froth from the back of his hand.

Ned remained, watching his friends reach the bottoms of their mugs despite the sound of a table dragged across the floor behind him. And another round. Falstaff was no more unsteady than usual, while Hal’s smile came easily and his gaze was hooded, upcast and downcast in turns as he slouched back in his seat and slumped forward over the table. He sought more support than he could find, and Ned had to hold himself back from going to offer it. From throwing an arm around Hal’s shoulders and leading him upstairs to bed.

For one thing, Hal would resent being forced to surrender the match to Falstaff. Oh, he’d forgive Ned in time, but…

An absolute mummer’s pageant was happening behind him if the shouted suggestions and poorly recited lines were any indication. One of the apprentices performed a quite accomplished falsetto and was applauded with a chorus of hoots and stamping feet. Hal leaned back again, his legs spread wide in pose that was hardly uncharacteristic, but caught Ned’s attention like an invitation.

It was only a matter of time, Ned thought, before matters got out of hand. He should keep an eye on his friends just in case.

The denizens of Mistress Quickly’s tavern understood, usually. Not that Ned didn’t get up to his share of mischief, but only to a point—at which, depending on his resolve, he stepped away or stepped in to resolve the aftermath. Most often that meant settling the bill. On the chance of the latter, he was left alone, like a tame deer who might spook.

The maid must not know how this worked. She was newly hired, or else not employed at the premises at all but a voyager in from the cold, seeking a different sort of hire. Her small hand touched Ned’s shoulder and the surprise of it nearly pulled him from his skin.

“Good evening, sir.” Smiling, she pushed a hank of hair over her shoulder.

Falstaff was trying to continue a conversation Ned had given up following long before. It looked as if Hal had, too— _God,_ the prince’s spread thighs and fitting leather trousers were revealing a little too much, and he’d braced one foot on the floor and seemed to rock against the bench as he set down his cup to be refilled again. The sight had its impact. Ned was a hair’s brush from arousal, though he realized it only as the girl, touching him familiarly, provided far more than a hair. She noticed, too.

He caught her hand as it moved down his chest. “Not tonight, dear.” To explain the refusal, he nodded towards his companions. “I’m saving my coin in case these two need rescue by my purse.”

Her fingers curled and she said softly, “You seem like a nice man. It’d be all right without money, with you.”

“On any other night,” Ned started, and he wasn’t entirely insincere—but then Mistress Quickly’s voice rose from the back of the room, calling a name that made the girl start to attention. She cast him a smile as she returned to work.

It had been a long time since Ned went with a girl—he hadn’t felt the need to. He was feeling a need now, although he wasn’t sure how much of that was thanks to the oddly appealing wistfulness of the young miss and how much due to another impromptu pageant. 

The player in that other display now stretched his long legs, rubbed the back of his neck, and leaped lightly to his feet.

“What, finished already?” sputtered Falstaff, but Hal didn’t seem to hear him.

Looking at him was honestly too much. Ned turned away as the prince approached, pressing a little closer to the table so its shadows would hide his groin. But Hal was pulling a chair over, sinking into it with hellfire in his eyes.

 His fingers slid confidently up Ned’s thigh, knowing their destination. And although Ned should stop him, he didn’t. He held still, contained, a  contrast to Hal’s loose-limbed sprawl. Even the prince’s teasing fingertips meandered the last inches. As they measured the fullness found beneath them, their master laughed, a thin sound sweet as honeycakes and too small to be caught over the raucous pageantry on the other side of the room. Ned bit his lip to hold back a sharp moan, or a demand, when Hal began to tap a ridiculous rhythm over the seam of his codpiece. 

He was begging to be struck.

The thought sent another rush of blood to Ned’s member, and Hal felt every twitch of it. His stroking stilled, and Ned thought he heard laughter before the touch resumed to a little more purpose.

Harshly, he whispered, “In the open, Hal?”

“Why not?” He asked as if it were a jest. True, a service like this, performed overtly, was hardly out of place in a den such as this—if Ned had received it from the young woman. Or even from a boy who didn’t have a face to be recognized as Hal’s. Who didn’t have so far to fall.

Hal turned, bracing himself with an elbow on the table while his other hand remained busily between Ned’s thighs. And Ned rose to him; he couldn’t help it. Hal knew just where and how to touch him, and despite the risk—or else because of it—this was a filthy thrill, outrageous but too tempting to deny.

Hal grinned as if losing his match to Falstaff, and losing most of his wits, was a fair trade for this.  Then the smile faded, and his lower lip vanished beneath his teeth. He nibbled at it as his fingers rubbed Ned. He seemed absorbed in concentration, his entire focus on how he stroked and cupped Ned through his hose. But then, in a gesture so slow and unselfconscious Ned nearly didn’t see it in his own distraction, the prince started reaching down between his own legs.

Ned caught him by the wrist and pulled that hand to his own body. Even though he wanted nothing more than to melt beneath that eager touch, minding nothing else, he wasn’t sure he trusted Hal not to make a spectacle of himself—a spectacle that could rival the pageant still going on across the room, which  Falstaff had hauled himself up to join, producing another storm of calls and laughter. Yet that diversion might not provide enough cover if Hal chose to be…well, Hal.

Or perhaps Ned just wanted all of Hal’s attention and effort focused on himself. And he had them, as Hal braced his free hand on the table and leaned closer to let the other knead him, his fingers rolling over the head of Ned’s cock, then stroking back towards his balls. Ned wished he had a drink to reach for, or some excuse to explain the rough, low cry he found himself struggling to swallow. His hips pushed forward into Hal’s touch.   

His right hand still imprisoned Hal’s beneath the table, holding it against his groin. It was a shock when the prince made a sharp turn of the wrist and escaped it. But before Ned could demand what he meant by that, Hal was sliding beneath the table, going to his knees and crawling between his legs.

Their eyes met as he began to unlace Ned’s leggings. His knuckles brushed the cock straining against tight-fitting fabric. Ned bit his lip on a growl. Then came a brush of air against his enflamed flesh—and then a hotter caress, Hal’s warm breath touching him just before his mouth enclosed his length. He braced his hands on Ned’s thighs, and Ned gripped both wrists to pin them there.

His gaze darted around once, saw no one looking in their direction. And then he gave himself over to the risk. He would have what he wanted, Hal would give it to him and be damned the consequences. The freedom was exhilarating.

Even so—

“Make it quick,” he whispered, finding the edge to his voice that made it an order. And greedily, Hal obeyed. His soft lips pressed to the base of Ned’s cock, wiry hair bending in the gust of his sigh. His eyes rolled shut, and the grip of his fingers constricted. 

Ned rocked his hips, amazed by the ease with which he slid inside. The wet heat was almost soothing against his urgent need, and as he nudged again—not thrusting, barely even moving, hardly needing to in the midst of such overwhelming sensation—as he pushed, Hal swallowed him, a moment of slick tightness that pulled Ned down with it. His balls swelled with the promise of release. It _would_ be quick, as he demanded, as he needed…

He did thrust, then, feeling the spasm as Hal took him. Their need for swiftness was a welcome excuse to be rough, if he required one. He shoved in hard, deep enough to find Hal’s throat. Lips sealed around his root, a velvety tongue rolled against the underside of his cock. There was no finesse here, slick and drunken and sloppy, nor did there need to be any. A new rush of slickness washed him before Hal swallowed and Ned came undone. He released Hal’s wrists, caught the prince’s neck supportively as he poured out against the back of his mouth.

As they separated, Hal grinned at him, a grin that revealed the mess they’d made. Froth lathered his lips, a mixture of saliva and come that dripped down his chin. He coughed, wiping with the back of his hand.

Ned watched Hal clean himself, still throbbing and sore from the force of his own release. He made a few fumbling attempts to lace up his leggings and at last managed it. Then he pushed back from the table and rose. Hal remained on his knees, and as Ned looked down at him he saw in the shadows between them—the tented fabric, the way Hal’s hands even now twitched as if to reach for it.

His climax had turned his legs to water, but Ned dismissed that weakness as he hauled Hal to his feet and dragged him by the back of his jacket. As he took him across the room, he had to adjust his hold with an arm thrown around the prince’s shoulders. Hal weaved unsteadily, sagging limply against Ned as they turned to pass one table. A few patrons grumbled as they eclipsed the view of Falstaff, who had a woman—not the miss Ned had made the acquaintance of earlier, but someone older—balanced precariously on his shoulders. Hal bestowed a wavering grin on Ned when he turned to look at him. It was a fight to keep his own expression stern, rather than breaking into laughter at how…floppy…the prince had become. Almost endearing in his helplessness. And something more.

He found a shadowed space under the stairs, half-hidden by barrels and a stack of chairs that needed mending. Hal hit the wall hard when Ned swung him—harder in truth than Ned had intended. Yet the prince seemed to relish the impact of his body against rough boards; he sagged against them with a sigh. His smile was still wet from sucking Ned.

“Now,” Ned murmured as he stepped close, “we need to keep quiet. Can you do that? Or do you want my help?”

A shudder worked its way from Hal’s shoulders to his hips. He looked at Ned with eyes gone dark. “Help me, please.”

He closed his left hand over Hal’s mouth, palm against parted lips, while the right pushed beneath the waist of the prince’s trousers. His cock jutted towards his stomach. Ned circled the head of it, gathering slickness on his fingertips, before moving farther down and back. Pushed against the wall, helplessly muffled, Hal tried to moan and spread his legs. The unsteady movement risked toppling him if Ned hadn’t set the weight of his left arm across his body, forcing him upright.

He followed the invitation, bringing his fingers behind Hal’s balls and pressing up, in. When he breached Hal the sharp tightness made them both groan, though the prince was still muffled by Ned’s hand. 

Ned circled with his finger, the first knuckle just past the ring of muscle, savoring the slow release of tension as it began to yield. Further in, he found the knot that made Hal startle whenever he brushed it. He curled his hand, slowly, in the now-familiar beckoning gesture, and Hal’s hips snapped against him. As he did it again, Ned rested his leg between Hal’s thighs. The breath fluttering against his palm felt more like a whimper now.

Hal rocked against Ned’s leg, then pressed back on his fingers. The hard grinding and the spurious, almost-dry penetration seemed to pain and rouse him in equal measure. Which was of course the point. Ned smiled, proud. And when he caught Hal’s hand straining for his groin, reaching only to catch itself and hold back, fingers tremoring—then he grinned in real triumph.

Without his permission, Hal wouldn’t—couldn’t—touch himself. Shoving into him again, Ned wondered if that would even be necessary to make the prince climax. But he felt lips moving against his palm, desperately, and then Hal shoved against him with such force that their heels scuffed on the floor. Ned kept from looking around furtively, checking for watchful eyes, only by an act of will.

“Well,” he whispered, leaning close to Hal’s ear, “we need to finish in haste. Use your hand.”

Hal’s lips spread and then pursed against his palm in silent thanks. Their touch made Ned’s member smart at the memory of them wrapped around it, but his focus was elsewhere now. He pushed and turned his fingers as Hal’s hand brushed his wrist, reaching in to take his own cock firmly. They both sighed as he grasped it, the shock of pleasure traveling through his body and every limb.

 He stroked, and Ned stroked, and the rhythm sped, hard and harsh and heated. Hal was still speaking against Ned’s hand, and though the pattern of lips and breath became repetitive, Ned suspected what he said and the excitement of the mere idea charged him.

Ned brought his head close and only then removed his hand. And yes, Hal did plead—a constant, low-whispered stream of “Please, Ned, _yes,_ like that, _deeper,_ Ned, yes, please, please—”

But then, as their motion reached a plane where every stroke and fingers’-thrust came with such fluid precision that it was almost as if movement had ceased at all, Hal’s murmurs changed. He said something else, and lust and drink so muddled his words that he had to struggle to repeat them.

“Yes?” Ned said, patiently. His fingers did not slow their shoving, beckoning, drawing motion as he waited to hear.

There, caught between the wall and Ned’s body, rocking between his fucking fingers and his own stroking fist, Hal whispered, “I’m not much of a proper prince, am I?”

Ned didn’t know how to answer. He didn’t know what answer Hal wanted. Did he seek reassurance, vulnerable as he was? Or did he yearn for one last sting, like salt in flayed wounds?

In the end Ned didn’t know if it was cruelty or virtue that made him do it, but he told the truth in a low hush against Hal’s cheek. “No, you’re not. Look at you.”

He pushed his leg harder, until he could feel Hal’s knuckles against his knee through their thin leather leggings. The prince moaned at his ear.

“You’re filthy,” Ned whispered. “Shameful. You’re lust and intoxication incarnate. You’re—” He broke off at the noise Hal made, a thin thread of sound that was rough yet somehow achingly sweet. Then his head knocked against the wall, so hard and sudden that Ned couldn’t cushion it, and his body bucked, writhed, shuddered like a whip cracking with the force of his orgasm.

Ned held him until it passed, and then he helped him to his seat and fetched small beer in hopes it might dilute the stronger brews swilling in his veins. Neither of them said a word about what had just passed between them, although each cast sidelong glances at each other. Ned sometimes caught those glances, and sometimes caught a small, secret smile.

 He wondered still, hours later in his bed at night, years later as he sat in the cold king’s chamber relating this memory to the queen. Thinking of how the prince sank so low in his debauchery that he seemed to make a show of it—to himself, to Ned, to the unknowing audience of the public. And if it were a performance—which of those parties did he act for?

He remembered the heat of him in his arms and the sudden force of his body wracked with pleasure at the climax. The sharp wine-smell of his breath and their panted words. A secret only they shared. Only Ned ever knew how far his prince had fallen.

And he was honest about what he saw.

He wasn’t sure if Hal was grateful for it, or whether he even had cause.

#

Catherine’s hand drops from her chin with a rustle of long velvet sleeve. Ned swallows. His voice had roughened on the last words, snagged by something sharp, and he had hoped she wouldn’t notice, or wouldn’t acknowledge if she had.

The queen is not so kind. “Gratitude. Is that what you sought from him?”

He has to smile at that. “Not truly. It’s only in morality plays, isn’t it, that sovereigns are grateful to the advisors who tell them the truth?” He shakes his head. “I was never his advisor, never a courtier.”

“You parted ways, when he was crowned?”

“Before that.”

The words are spoken low, and she leans nearer to hear. Her expression is soft, but not gentle. She is too absorbed in what he has to say for gentleness.

He wonders what she is thinking: what companions has she discovered, that her husband took at court? Besides Scrope, the traitor?

Ned was never that. Not a flatterer nor an advisor, but never a betrayer. He was constant.

He speaks, tasting words like sharp-edged grains of salt: “Hal went to war. He didn’t come back…”

#

Didn’t come back the same, he means to say. Misses the last two words. The queen does not seem to notice, and the tale carries on as well without them.

Hal acted the same, at first. Maybe a little wilder, and a little more generous. His altercation with the lord chief justice, his gift of a page of Falstaff, suggested not so much some new incarnation of Hal as a stronger portion of the old. Ned wondered, once, whether the battlefield had provoked the same effect on the prince as sack did: reducing inhibitions, provoking indulgence, encouraging him to reach eagerly and greedily and recklessly for life.

He saw the prince’s scar as they stripped in the bathhouse—an ugly knot through his left shoulder, although clean. _It’s healing well,_ Ned thought but didn’t say, unsure if Hal would appreciate the observation. It was difficult to tell how he felt about the scar. It didn’t mar his beauty, but there didn’t seem a way to say that, either.

Then Hal slumped against a wooden pillar, and Ned had to hold himself from stepping near to catch him. He turned the instinctive movement into a turn, resting shoulder to shoulder with his prince.

“Before God,” Hal said, “I am exceeding weary.”

Hal would have said that before Shrewsbury, too, but in a lighter tone, half-joking with his weakness. Though Ned tried to laugh the statement off, Hal’ continued, rueful but remorseless—“Does it not show vilely in me to desire small beer?”

The most distressing thing about such a desire was its _smallness_ ; Hal had never been content with nursery pap. "Why, a prince should not be so loosely studied as to remember so weak a composition.”   “But then,” the prince said, “these humble considerations make me out of love with greatness. What a disgrace is it to me to remember thy name.”

The words, like the keenest knife, took several moments to cut, several instants for the pain to register, the blood to rush. _What right does he—_ came the first retort, but of course Hal had every right. It was vile of him to be here, in disgraceful company. As before—it was the thought of _before_ that made the cut the sharpest, perhaps—Ned had nothing to reply with but the truth. And this time he did fling it to hurt. “How ill it follows, after you have laboured so hard, you should talk so idly! Tell me, how many good young princes do so, their fathers being so sick as yours at this time is?”

What a petty treason, invoking the looming death of the king himself to leave the prince smarting.

And so it went.

This was not a jest any longer, if it ever was. Hal didn’t flirt with abuse of himself ( _What wouldst thou think of me if I should weep? A most princely hypocrite_ ) nor, for that matter, of Ned ( _one it pleases me, for fault of a better, to call my friend_ —if that was meant as abuse, and he couldn’t but fear that it was) for amusement. And it was not, as Ned first wondered, anything like that night when Hal was intoxicated, lost in the midst of erotic abandon. There was no gleam of hellfire in his eyes.

He was grieving, or would be if he could, if it suited appearances. This wasn’t about Shrewsbury after all. Ned had only thought it was because Shrewsbury left a physical mark. The real change had happened deeper, and seemed to cling around Hal like a pal, an air of doom-laden expectation.

“You have been so lewd—” He held back from the _Thou hast_ which would make such a statement truly obscene, or perhaps he fell back to formalities, a subject addressing his prince. The words spoken in that steaming room have been seared into his brain, but he no longer knows the reasons for most of them. In the end his courage did fail him enough to name Falstaff as the cause of Hal’s disgrace.

“And to thee.”

Hal said it softly, almost sweetly, almost gently. And yet Ned sensed the blade again, sensed danger from this transformed Hal and what else he might say. He snapped back at it. His temper was up, bitter as black bile. “By this light, I am well spoke on—” He was interrupted only by the arrival of Bardolph and Flastaff’s page, bearing a note.

The paper held nothing to improve his mood. _Be not too familiar with Poins; for he misuses favours so much that he swears thou art to marry his sister. Repent at idle times as thou mayst…_ Did Falstaff think he could distract from his own faults by pointing to Ned Poins? What game was the old sot playing?

He wished Hal would stop laughing, wished it as vitally as before he had wished he would start. The laughter now sounded too deliberate, and wooden as a mummer’s mask. Mocking Ned’s ambitions, or the ambitions he was accused of having. Had he ever been ambitious? He no longer remembers. 

But in the end, the smile that could come so easily hesitated. Leaving the prince’s face for a moment as a clean and perfect mask. “Must I marry your sister?”

Hal asked it in a soft voice again, a small voice, a nearly timid one, as if he expected Ned to order him. Which Ned never would. He was no fool, and he would _never_ be that recklessly ambitious. And God knew if he ever was, he would not have entrusted the fact to John Falstaff.

This wasn’t the kind of power he wanted to have over Hal.

Even so—“God send the wench no worse fortune!” He did mean to look after his sister, Nell, a patient girl their family’s circumstances left with even fewer prospects than he had. The thought of finding her a position at the palace had occurred to him, and was tempting, but never—what in Hell’s name was Hal thinking, that Ned would arrange some sort of affair? The two of them, with his own sister as go-between?

He felt depraved for even having the idea, and more so because of the glimmer of pure _wanting_ that it kindled. It went beyond lust, far beyond it. Finding some way to cement this matter with Hal, alliance or mésalliance, would be—could have been—but Ned would never want to draw an innocent woman into it, not his own blood or anyone else’s.

He stammers, trying to explain this part to Catherine. She listens with her thin smile—not taking pleasure in the telling, he thinks; instead it is a studious or curious expression, as if she were an attentive pupil calculating sums in grammar school.

“Was that the end of it?” she asks.

“Not quite yet.”

Because there was a last grace, a last glimpse of Hal’s old ways. Suddenly he was teasing information out of Bardolph and stirring up a plan, stealing in on Falstaff in Eastcheap.

“I am your shadow, my lord,” Ned said. “I’ll follow you.” He spoke in nothing but earnest, however sour the truth. He would follow him, like a servant, like a liege man, and without the wages either might draw. He was not Hal’s master in any way that counted. He would follow him to the barren ends of the Earth, and now it was as if for the first time he could see clearly, could not deny that such a place would be where he was inevitably led.

But when Hal said “Follow me, Ned,” he followed. Followed that bright voice and prankish smile. Followed the easy stride of a long, lean-limbed body, slick with steam and sweat, a sheen of it he could almost taste just from seeing. Laughing, Ned reached out to ruffle the prince’s messy, damp hair. Hal allowed it. And he allowed Ned’s fingers to clamp tight, to seize him and pull him by the skull to a shadowed corner.

As it always was. Quickly, roughly, he stripped away the cloth from around Hal’s waist, and he didn’t care for once if they were spotted. In this light, in this place, surely nobody would recognize them. Other forms writhed in the wet shadows of the bathhouse, though it wasn’t a proper stew like you’d find in Eastcheap. He wondered suddenly if the step towards propriety—or away at least from pure sin—was another sign of the change in Hal.

Ned dismissed the thought as he turned Hal around and pushed him to the wall. The prince’s hands braced on boards slick and swollen with steam. Damp wood and warm flesh and salt teased Ned’s nostrils, a crude, gross brew that shouldn’t enchant his desire the way it did. He rucked up the cloth around his own waist, grasping his cock. He stepped so close to Hal that he could lash out his tongue and taste his skin as he had wanted, the bitter-clean tang of it. As Hal shivered, Ned ran the head of his cock along his warm cleft, where it slid easily, everything slick from sweat and steam and bathing oils.

He moved closer, letting Hal feel every inch of him growing rigid. Then, just as he felt the muscles in the prince’s thighs become tense, ready to press back against him, he pulled away. Hal whined but kept in place.

“Good boy,” Ned murmured under his breath, barely aware he said it, as he teased him with his cock again.

Hal scratched at the wall with such frantic energy that Ned feared he would gather splinters under his nails. But he didn’t stop or slow—pushing inside him, the head of his cock just past the tight ring, then out again, and then in deeper, past the firmer kernel that make Hal writhe like a leaf in flames, and away, building up to it, drawing it out. Hal was flushed with more than the heat of the room, trembling and iron-still in turns as he fought to manage himself.

Ned continued to move slowly, deliberate but unhurried. Giving Hal a chance to refuse—because it would be better to be rejected by the prince than to be allowed to fuck him out of pity, or as largesse. To spend inside him and see in profile, nearly eclipsed by his heaving shoulder, another of those too-late smiles.

And Ned wanted to make him beg for it.

Which, of course, he did. Because he remained Hal, however he had changed. Because Hal wanted Ned. But Ned didn’t let the begging go on as long as he might like it to in other circumstances. He wanted as desperately as Hal did, and he couldn’t risk letting that pleading voice be recognized.

And what if Hal stopped begging, clamped down those perfect royal lips and kept his silence?

Ned didn’t give him the chance. He grasped Hal’s hips and drove into him. He fucked him like the other men in this room fucked their whores, as if the prince was as common as the way between Saint Albans and London—only more roughly than any whore would stand for. He knew Hal loved his roughness, suspected too that he enjoyed the covert public humiliation, being taken for someone so low.

He wrapped his fingers around the prince’s member, stroked briskly. His other hand left Hal’s hips and traced up his bowed spine, clutched at the nape of his neck, tangled and pulled at the ends of his hair. Ned was careful of any further cruelty, afraid of what it might mean from him now. He didn’t strike Hal, as much as he wanted to, _because_ he wanted to. Ned had never realized how much their previous wrestling stemmed from something warm, playful, fond—until he confronted the lack of it.

“Ned, please, God, _do…that…_ ”

He didn’t know what the prince was begging for, and probably Hal didn’t either. Something impossible for either of them to give. Something Ned spurred himself to reach for, snapping his hips as if the motion could draw it closer, could bring them to the brink of anything beyond base physical release.

Somewhere in the midst of it, he released Hal’s hair. If his hand, grasping at nothing, half-flailing, happened to strike the prince’s healing shoulder, he excused himself for it as an accident. Pure mischance, that sent Hal crying out—muffling the noise with his own hand, that came away afterwards bloody from splinters and the marks of his teeth—wracked and spending over Ned’s fingers.

Ned closed his eyes, braced his forehead against Hal’s shoulder, and came inside him for the last time. 

**_#_ **

“War,” Catherine says, “can change many things.”

The observation, while true enough, is so incongruous Ned wonders for a moment if she had even listened to him this past quarter of an hour. Or had his stammering, his murmuring, his hesitations and chases after the wrong words lost her attention?

Then he considers whether she takes this ground as a kindness to him.

“Yes,” he says. “War and kingship.”

“War and queenship, too,” she murmurs. He expects to see her smirking, but her expression is grave, not matching the lightness of her voice.

He had been in France when war came. When Hal—Henry—brought his armies, terrorized towns and countryside, overturned the order of a kingdom. Ned had fled back to England before Agincourt, as furtively as he had fled to France in the wake of the old king’s death. Both times under the pressure of fear rather than any more solid concerns, so that he felt rather  like a pilgrim somehow convinced the end of the world had come in a way known only to himself.

Worlds end with war, with a king’s death—with a coronation.

Catherine stands and begins to sweep across the chamber, her stride too measured to be pacing.

Worlds begin with a new crown, too; entire vistas open.

“And where does that leave us?” he asks aloud.

She looks up at him. If she finds the _us_ too intimate, she gives no sign.

Ned sighs. “If you seek insight, I’ve given you all I have. I didn’t understand him, at the end. Whether blooding himself at Shrewsbury or taking on the crown changed him, or if he changed at all, I only know now…” He breaks off, his throat aching.

Hal discarded him so easily in the end. After that night in Eastcheap, never another word came from him. He went up to the castle to mourn his father and never came back down. He sent Falstaff away with such harsh words that Ned didn’t dare risk approaching him at court himself.

He had become a proper king, and kings did not debase themselves with petty noblemen’s sons. Princes shouldn’t, either. It was beneath Hal’s dignity to want him, and perhaps that’s why he did. If he did. If setting Ned aside with such ease had not been a sign that he never cared in the first place.

And if Hal _had_ wanted him? Wanted him, and gave him up anyway, without a word, without a sign of regret?

“But he loved you,” the queen says.

Ned has to laugh, shaking his head. Though ridiculous, it’s sweet of her to think so, a hint of youth and naiveté to the woman who otherwise seems so formidable. She can steal a man’s throne behind his back, but she cannot seem to believe he would debase himself with someone unless his heart demanded it.

 Ridiculous.

“Hal either pretended to be fond of me,” Ned says, “or he pretended to give me up. I cannot believe he did both. Even he could not contain such paradoxes.” And he had never come back for Ned—never come begging, or even asking. Never sought him out.

Ned once thought that he had stripped away the player’s mask, that at the very bottom of his soul, Hal desired him shamefully—shamelessly—beyond shame.

Now he’s no longer sure.

His hands form fists, as if pulling hair or grasping flesh, or preparing to land a blow. Or like a sailor fallen into the waves and gripping tight to a rescuing rope.

“You,” she says from the foot of the throne, “love him.”

The present tense.

“I do, your highness,” Ned says. Unfolding his fingers before the nails draw blood.

Her hair shimmers in the candlelight with a motion, not a shake of her head, not a nod. “Why?”

He cannot answer.

After a moment, she laughs and her shoulders dip in an elegant shrug. “I do not know, either.”

It’s a startling confession, if he stopped to study it. And yet why should she not love him? From what she’s said, Henry has tried to make her happy—and done well enough at it that she hopes more is possible.

Ned understands that hope intimately.

“I think,” he muses aloud, “it is because he makes himself someone we want him to be.” Trying to pleasure her, gently and kindly. As he had tried to play the offender in Eastcheap, tried to play a manful, lusty youth with the whores and all who listened when he went to them. As he played…whatever he did…with Ned.

And as he had earned the loyalty of his court by becoming the king they desired. A warrior king, bold, devout. _Faithful._ Ned’s mind taunts him with the word. He remembers again the spike of dark pleasure he’d felt, sharp and loveless as impalement, when he’d heard of Scrope’s betrayal. Let Henry learn what it was like to have a friend prove false.

“He became what we wanted him to be,” Ned says now.

The queen wrinkles her nose, a catlike expression. “Someone else. A false nature.”

Ned cannot deny it. Her disgust, if that is what it is, doesn’t satisfy or soothe so much as it confirms Ned’s fears. She sees what he has seen.

“What would the true one be?” he asks.

She shrugs. It seems that is not her concern.

“Perhaps,” he says, “there’s someone he wants to be, too.”

The lord who led the slaughter at Agincourt? The rakehell of Eastcheap? Ned’s lover? Hers?

Catherine’s features relax suddenly with a low sigh. “We will make him pay for it,” she says.

Her voice is calm, neither hot with rage nor chilled with distant ice. Her face is serene. Her sleeves hang still from her crossed arms, like streamers of cloud in a windless sky, like the robes of the statue of an angel. Ned has never before seen anything as utterly ruthless.

His suspicions about her, his fears, his feeble remaining English loyalties that made him fret about potential treason—whether they are completely stilled or not, he doesn’t care. “Yes,” he says to the queen. “We will.”

After all, he tells himself, this is more a matter of personal justice than of treason. And perhaps, once Henry has paid his way—

He looks at Catherine, feeling as if he looks up although she stands on a level with him, and is more than a head shorter. He returns her smile. It is not a cruel smile, but unyielding, unshakeable.

They will have their revenge. And then they will see what remains.


	4. Courage

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It was superficially nothing, no more than any wife might ask. But Catherine would go about it in a manner rather different from most wives. The queen of England was not most wives.

Upon her husband’s return to Westminster, the royal household prepared to embark on a tour through the northern reaches of the kingdom. The people of the farthest corners of England deserved to see their new-crowned queen. Though it was flattering to be the center of attention—she was more often overshadowed by her mother and elder brother growing up—the preparations launched as much chaos as Catherine had yet seen in the English court. Almost worthy of the machinations of her childhood in Paris.

She thought much on machinations, on games and performances and players.

She knew Henry was a liar—she’d known it from the moment he began courted her. Her marriage had first been entertained when she was just a girl, years before it came to pass, and the arrangement had been refused to form a pretext for war. War that was itself part of his pretext of kingship. Henry was a usurper’s son. He always had to prove that he was worthy.

France had seen the consequences of that at Agincourt. And Catherine had seen the more personal consequences the night she interviewed Edward Poins.

It was time Harry Plantagenet saw the consequences. Time he was made to pay. For lying. For playing. For being Ned Poin’s companion in debauchery, and then his condemner; for being Kate’s selfless lover. Because he _was_ selfless, and he had offered him _self_ to her—and that meant he had offered her _nothing_.

And that was an insult she would not bear.

 _“What more do you want?_ ” Poins had asked her.

She had always wanted to marry a king. She was born to it. Even if she hadn’t been, she had to admit marriage to Henry appealed—for the power it brought, and for the peace it bought, too. But that last was a forced bargain. Another sin to make him pay for.

Well, he wanted her hand, whatever his desire for the crown it gave him. Catherine’s concern was for the terms by which they would have each other.

Even at the thought, she flushed, her face safely hidden as she bent over her needlework. There was another reason she wanted Henry on his knees to her, another reason she wanted to punish and master him. Not that she wasn’t furious; if anything, her anger was all the sharper because of her gentler feelings towards her husband. Because she liked him. And the thought that Henry might be glad to surrender power to her—that his generosity was _selfish_ as much as selfless—and that he might be willing to let her take her vengeance was…breathtaking.

She sent for Ned Poins on the day of one of her husband’s audiences. Owen escorted him through the rest of the crowd gawking in the galleries before leading him to a private chamber. Catherine’s primary intent  had been to invite the Englishman north—she did not want to waste any time in putting her plans into action; certainly she did not wish to wait until the entire journey was completed—but she knew the occasion would also give him his first chance at seeing Henry in several years.

She didn’t expect thanks for that, but as she went in to see him after the audience, Catherine found herself unexpectedly nervous.

He sat on a couch before the brazier, a cup of wine in his hands. Owen, who must have been the one to fetch him the wine, stood now at the door, offering solitude. Catherine smiled at him as she swept inside. “Ensure no one interrupts us.”

The rustle of her gown drew Ned’s head up.  She sat across from him, as if they were equals. “Well?”

He shook his head. “He’s…somewhat changed.”

His laughter was thin as embroidery thread, so shaken she could not even tell if he meant an ironic understatement.

“Changed how?” Catherine asked softly.

“Well, for a start, when I knew him he didn’t have that beard.”

She licked her lips to cover a smile.

“He looks more like a king with it, less like a boy…” Ned sighed and repeated, “Less like a boy,” with more finality. Then he sat back with a wag of his head. “He’s not Hal anymore.”

Catherine’s grip tightened on the arm of her chair. “How can you be sure? Just from a look?”

“How else would I tell?” His expression was bleak as he turned to her.

When he had told her about his history with Henry—with Hal—she had been able to picture everything so vividly. Or at least to imagine it. But she wondered now at her accuracy. Because all the time, she had been picturing her husband in Ned Poins’ bed—a man Ned did not seem to recognize.

And yet he was the same man.

He had to be.

“The court will be traveling in the North,” she said. “A journey of several months. I would like you to follow my household. If you need funds, I’ve told Owen—”

She paused, deliberately, and though Ned bowed his head in something like a nod, she wasn’t sure he was listening.

“Do you think,” she asked, “that my husband has changed so much that our plans would no longer succeed?”

Ned’s eyes widened. “Madam?”

“If you do, best end it now. Yes?”

“I’m not sure.” His Adam’s apple bobbed with a hard swallow. She could not tell if it was from desire or fear, or both. He must be as loathe to give the idea up as she was, yet if they assumed wrong—presumed wrong—the consequences were unimaginable.

It was unimaginable, Catherine thought, that they should be so wrong about her husband.

And Ned Poins seemed to feel the same way. After a long moment of stillness, he shook his head. “If there’s any chance—we must go through with it. If there’s any chance at all that it would reach him.”

His desperation wasn’t weakened by that moment of doubt, but that should not have surprised Catherine so much. She’d watched him speak of Hal with something deeper than longing, hungrier than lust. If there was any way of bringing back that lost prince, or even a glimpse of him, then he must try to seek it.

And still, the consequences if they failed…

Musing, Catherine rubbed her fingers over her chin. She thought again of Henry’s beard and smiled. “You’re right, though,” she said, her tone lighter. “My husband doesn’t look like a boy with that hair covering his face. I wonder what he would look like without it.”

Ned’s lips tugged into a willing smile. “Most becoming, madam.”

“And also, it wouldn’t scratch…”

Their eyes met. Catherine worried she might have misstepped by referring to her intimacy with her husband, at least in this moment when Ned Poins was so strangely vulnerable. When it was clear that she had touched Henry far more recently than he had.

But he didn’t look at her with envy. “Madam,” he said, still smiling softly, “We ought to do something about that.”

“Indeed we might.”

***

Would a proper king’s pride bear what she was about to attempt?

It was superficially nothing, no more than any wife might ask. But Catherine would go about it in a manner rather different from most wives. Considering what she had already done, she had to swallow a laugh. The queen of England was not most wives.

It was easy to stifle laughter when she considered again what was at risk if her attempt failed, if she wrongly guessed what was under the mask she had married, if she found herself at his mercy indeed…

She tested the razor’s edge, snipping a thread of silk that had unraveled from her embroidered bodice. Ned Poins had brought the knife to her, and he’d taught her how to wield it, too. They’d closeted themselves in one of the audience chambers with soap and hot water, and she stood over his chair and ran the blade carefully over his jaws and bared neck.

“A little firmer,” he had told her once, not laughing at how caution had almost defeated her purpose—not daring to, for one thing, and perhaps like hers his thoughts were on a thing that kept away laughter.

So she pressed harder, hard enough that Ned’s eyes widened, and she oh-so-firm-and-gently scraped a line of stubble from his cheek and throat. It had taken all her discipline to keep her clammy hands from shaking. Who would have thought desire and anxiety had so much in common?

Both were a matter of anticipation.

She was setting the razor aside when the door to her bedchamber opened. In the polished steel of the mirror over her table, she saw her husband enter.

Catherine turned to him with her sweetest expression. It wasn’t all acting, this. He had returned today from a week-long journey. She hadn’t seen much of him this past month, and most of their rare meetings had been rigidly formal public affairs.

Henry also seemed glad to have received her invitation; he greeted her with a warm embrace and kissed her lips as if he would be lost in them. She liked it when he did that.

He kept his hand at her waist when the kiss ended. His eyes swept over her—she hadn’t changed, any more than he had—and then moved around the room. “The tapestry, it’s new. You finished it?”

A unicorn reared on delicate hind legs, tugging the chain that looped around the branch of a sweeping oak tree and anchored the crown-shaped collar at its neck. The background was a dense pattern of fruit and leaf and sunshine, edged with gold and green and blue as dark as midnight. She had begun it as a virgin, and now it covered a third of the wall in her marriage chamber.

“Yes, my lord.”

“It’s beautiful.” He was looking at her again, and he said as if he had just discovered the word, “Beautiful.”

This time she met his kiss with more than sweetness; she parted her lips and let them close over his, and over his tongue, and set them mouthing along his chin. Her purr of pleasure roughened as she felt the prickle of his beard, and his throat jerked with a swallow as the sound vibrated against his skin.

She’d seen that his cup was kept full at the welcome feast, but he hadn’t drunk deeply. Just enough, she hoped, to make him incline from the stance of the perfect king, to be a mere mortal instead. Mortal flesh reacted to the touch and sounds of her mouth. She drew back, letting him follow her, his lips tracing over her chin and neck. Catherine bent her head, sighed at his exploration—and then pulled away with a soft sound, not quite of disgust.

“Kate?”

“You scratch me.” She made a face, half-humorous and half a wince. He _did_ scratch, and though it wasn’t all that unpleasant, it wasn’t difficult to express discomfort at it either.

“I’m sorry,” he said, a smile tugging his lips. “How can I make my apologies to you?”

Catherine hadn’t expected it to be so easy. He didn’t move as she reached for him, and barely shifted as her fingertips stroked rough fur from his chin down his neck. “You should remove this,” she said.

“Is that what you wish?”

“Yes.”

“Then I shall see it done!” Grinning, he tried to step closer to her, his arms at her waist. She pushed back against the embrace. Her fingers were still at his throat, and she pressed hard with them, nearly jabbing. Henry went still, his expression of jollity turning to surprise.

“Tonight,” she said.

His eyebrows rose. “Darling, I—”

“Tonight,” Catherine repeated. She ran her fingers upward, the short reddish hairs rasping, and beneath them the skin dipping and muscles tremoring from the pressure. “I can do it.”

He chuckled, not dismissively but incredulously. “And where has my queen learned that?”

She took her hand from his neck. Catherine was not sure whether deception was one of her many skills, and in particular she was still not certain enough of her command of English to make that language lie for her. And at this moment, with her fingertips still stinging from his beard and the memory of his pulse beating beneath his skin, a memory that pounded in her own blood as it pooled in her, she could not focus enough to imagine a convincing story.

Neither could she find the words that might convince him to simply be quiet and do as she asked, or to let it be done. That was all she needed, his passiveness, his merest permission. And she didn’t know how to demand it. If she’d ever asked Ned for such words or heard them from his lips, she’d forgotten.

She let her hands make up the difference. She grasped one embroidered cuff of Henry’s tunic sleeve and tugged at it, drawing him with her towards the bed. Then she reached to his shoulders and pushed at them until he sat. It was the first time since their wedding night that she had laid hands on him for more than a charming kiss or a dance, and perhaps it startled them both. Even seated, he was almost at her level; their eyes met and something seemed to spark between them, liquid lightning.

She felt it flowing through her fingers, too. She kept one hand on his shoulder, curling a little, not quite seizing or forming a fist, while the other opened the cabinet within reach of the bed and searched it for the box from Ned. It held a bowl with a tufted brush and a soft wad of sharp-scented soap. She set these on Henry’s lap and he held still, letting them rest there. With a smile, Catherine went to her table and took the razor from it, as well as a jar of water.

She mixed up a lather, then painted it over his beard, trying not to let her inexperience show. Henry helped, bending his head back to let her cover his chin and the underside of his jaw. He swallowed hard when she reached for the blade, but when she looked into his face he smiled as if to reassure her. The smile faded as he took in her expression.

She felt very stern, partially in concentration and partly from something else, something she wasn’t yet able to name. Her hand didn’t tremble, which had been her first concern. The second was that she might not press it firmly enough to be effective. That proved not to be a problem, either.

When she pulled the razor away to swipe lather from it, Henry took a deep breath. It was his first one, she realized, since she put the blade to his throat. She glanced at him sidelong. She liked the idea that he was nervous—perhaps even more than she was—but her pride stung at the thought that he found her inexperienced or clumsy.  

That may have been what made her strokes a little harder when she returned to the task, enough to make him hold his breath again, to made him go so still that she felt the strain of it trembling in his limbs as she straddled him and pressed close. She watched the strip of bare skin the edge of the blade revealed. Pale, spotless, soft. She was too near to judge the overall effect on his features—that would come later.

Neither could she see his expression. But she caught one corner of his mouth quivering. Suppressing speech? Suppressing laughter? The scene was very unusual, a woman shaving her husband, a _queen_ playing body servant to her king. Or the other way of looking at it—a queen wielding a knife against her king—that was no less strange. But what was it he had said to her? _We are the makers of manners_?

The words had been a glimpse, she saw now, of his old reflected hellfire.

Her pulse had begun to hammer. She no longer fought to keep her hand steady, letting her confidence grow and also a kind of keen eagerness. No longer awkwardly slow nor careful, she ran the blade higher, in long passes from his collar to his cheek.

Henry watched her, his eyes moving, straining to follow her hand. _Do you trust me_? She didn’t ask it aloud, unsure if she had her English right, not caring enough. Whether he trusted her or not, he was allowing her this. Surely he would not have done so if he thought he’d brought another Scrope into his bed.

Then again, cutting his throat would be a less subtle betrayal. Perhaps he’d prefer it.

And then, though not his throat, blood was running down from his cheek, from a place where her knife hadn’t been able to follow the angle of bone and skin. A red droplet swelled from the cut and ran down like a tear. Catherine caught it on her thumb, then blotted it with the cloth she’d been using to clean away lather. Only belatedly did she realize she should make some soft apology. At least if she wanted to pretend that she was sorry.

One thing Catherine knew for certain was that she was not sorry. Everything else, though, came slowly to her attention. For long moments there had been nothing but the smooth, clean stroke of her knife against Henry’s skin. Now she realized she was aching, and the identity of the ache only revealed itself when she felt the wetness slide between her nether lips.

Some women might be thrown into crisis at discovering they grew aroused while making their husband bleed. Catherine already knew herself too well for that.

And she knew Henry too well to be entirely surprised as she shifted and felt the firmness in his lap. He couldn’t hold back a soft breath at her little movement. She paused to take in his expression. He was flushing above the white lather and the line of deeper red tracking from the cut. His eyes were aglow, and yes, _there_ was his hellfire. She felt it burning into her, inside her, running in her veins.

Henry bent his head. He was already close enough that she could smell the copper of blood and the clean waxy scent of the soap. Catherine breathed it in, but pulled away before he could kiss her.

Raising the razor again, she summoned all her English and managed two words, “Don’t move.”

He didn’t.

He trembled once as her straddling thighs brushed against his straining member, although he mastered his impulse quickly. The razor scraped his skin but didn’t draw further blood. She shaved the last strip of beard away, careful around the corner of his mouth.

“Finished,” Catherine announced. Then she climbed from his lap and went to the fireplace, where warm water waited in a copper basin. Once again she had the intriguing sense of doing a manservant’s work—but not of serving Henry, no.

She soaked a cloth and ran it over his face to clean the tracings of lather. Henry’s breath hissed through his teeth at the heat against his newly sensitive skin. She ran her fingers after it, smiling at the silky, delicate texture. “You’ve lovely. Much softer now.”

Bare-faced and flushed, he already looked younger—boyish, fresh. Innocent, to a mere glance. Vulnerable, to a more penetrating one, to an observer who knew to look for the young man Ned Poins had loved.

She began the kiss softly, a glancing touch to his lips, and Henry would not deepen it. Catherine shouldn’t curse his gentleness. She’d had too much cause to be grateful for it. But she didn’t trust it; she _did_ want to punish him for it. And so she let her tongue flick against his lips, asking to be let it, and as he yielded she settled into his lap. A squirm made her fully aware of his hardness, and him fully aware of _her_.

Fighting her own impatience, she continued kissing, teasing. She sucked at his lower lip and licked inside his mouth, then began to rove over his jaw, chin, cheek. He tasted of salt and soap, with a touch of iron when her tongue swept over the scrape from the razor. She could feel Henry’s breath, warm against her face, coming harder.

“You feel so good,” she murmured to him, splaying her fingers across his throat as she had before, this time finding no interference between their pressure and his flesh. Her hips rocked, hungry for more contact with him, for more…

Catherine turned, pulling Henry with her, so that suddenly she sat at the edge of the bed and his knees struck the floor before her. She’d caught him off-balance but she couldn’t have brought him there without his cooperation. Smiling down at her husband, Catherine began to draw her skirt higher.

His large hands settled on her thighs, their warmth and calluses sending a jolt through her. But she set her own fingers over them, pinning them.

“What do you want?” she asked him. It was hard to shape the words, and he looked at her with such a strange expression that she feared he didn’t understand her.

“Will you…?” He spoke smoothly, but his own voice seemed to fail him. Henry ducked his head, tongue darting across his lips, his gaze fastened to the place they both, it seemed, had in mind.

Catherine laughed, fastened a hand in his hair, and pulled him towards her.

He fit tightly between her legs; he pushed close and she clasped her limbs around him, silk flowing into silk. There was no reason for him to hold back, at least not from fear of causing her discomfort. And he showed no reluctance as his tongue swept out, lapping and penetrating. If Catherine intended this as revenge, her plot might have escaped her control, she reflected ruefully while biting down a gasp. But had she?

This wasn’t much like the morning of her wedding. The sensation was more intense, intimate, their bodies closer. When Henry drew back for a breath, she saw a streak of dull red where his cheek had rubbed against her thigh, reopening the cut. _Not virgin’s blood,_ she thought, _but_ virgin _blood, somehow._ Her hand still grasped his hair. She pulled him again to her. His hands slid beneath her body, holding and supporting, but it was her grip that kept him in place, until it wasn’t a matter of what he would give but what she wanted to take.

The newness of the situation distracted her, so that it took a long time for her to come. When she did, it was long, shuddering, brutal. She forced his face against her, his tongue into her, twisting and drawing out her pleasure.

It felt so good.

He withdrew slowly. Her fingers one by one uncurled to release his hair. She let him go until she could look down and see his face. Then she rose from his cradling hands.

What next? She asked herself the question with a flutter of anticipation more than panic, knowing it was her choice, knowing she was in control…

She stood, and Henry fell back on his heels to keep his eyes on her. Desire burned in them, and his empty hands, now fallen to his lap, curled on themselves, speaking as eloquently as courtly poetry of his wish to touch her again.

Catherine walked around to the other side of the bed. As she did, she passed so close to Henry that she imagined he could smell the lust clinging to her, the musky satisfaction that he would have none of tonight. Not deigning to turn her head, she had to glimpse his reaction from the corner of her eye. It proved her intuition true: along with his hellfire eyes and clenched hands, there was something in the bearing of his shoulders, the curl of his parted lips, that suggested he found her denial as rapturous as fucking her had ever made him.

If she’d wanted to hear him beg, she might have been disappointed. But begging struck Catherine now as an annoyance. His quiet acceptance was more pleasing. And—she sank to the mattress with shaking legs—she wasn’t sure she would have the continued strength to refuse him if he pleaded for her favors. Not that she would let him service her again. She stretched, her every nerve replete with being serviced. But the thought of their wedding night—climbing atop him, riding him mad and helpless until he came with gasped blasphemies—Catherine caught herself. This would be a test of her own discipline as well as his.

Almost soundlessly, Henry climbed into bed beside her. He lifted the blankets with slow caution, trying to avoid brushing against her. The bed was royal in size but seemed small now, full of their presence. Hers and his and the threads of desire, demand, and denial spinning a pattern between them. Catherine savored the design as she closed her eyes. It was something to have thwarted a king.

They both lay very still, Catherine feeling no need to move, drifting restfully, while she suspected her husband struggled under greater tension. She expected sleep would claim her soon and leave him to his endurance. The thought was…not as pleasing as she had anticipated. She almost felt sorry for him.

And then, because it was her choice, she decided she might have mercy. “Husband,” she murmured in the darkness.

He shifted beside her. He spoke murkily, suggesting the wine was at last affecting him, or else lust or exhaustion. “Yes…?”

“I want…” And she smiled, letting him wait, knowing she would have what she wanted. What she wanted and nothing more, nothing less. They’d proven that together tonight. “I want you to touch yourself.”

At first there was no sign that her words had even been heard. Perhaps the drink from supper was too strong in him, and he was almost asleep. Perhaps he was feigning sleep to avoid acknowledging her order. If so, Catherine wasn’t certain what to do. Grasp his hand and force it to his rod? An amusing image, in some ways, but ridiculous too…and dangerous. A part of Catherine shied from forcing her husband, while a part of England’s queen quailed at the thought of forcing the king. She’d dropped her guard; her earlier courage had seeped away as she sank between feather-stuff cushions and silk.

Then came the whisper of shifting cloth, and the blanket was folded at her side as Henry pushed it off him. The mattress beneath them dimpled, and though the bed didn’t rock, she sensed the first small movements as if they rolled the world with them. He was slow at first, almost furtive. She listened to the damp rasp of each stroke, the sound a mixture of his palm against his skin and his breath panting from his mouth. She remembered those palms against her bottom, that mouth at her entrance, and the memories made her pulse in time with him. Faster, then, more insistently. His gasps quickened and deepened and then became ragged. He was in earnest. Did he picture her? Coming into her body, raising her pleasure—or claiming it? Might he think, even after all these years, of Ned Poins? Or did he think of nothing, focused only on the animal sensation?

Then his voice shattered the night, raw, _begging_ , and it did not annoy her in the slightest. If the words had not been so simple she might not have understood them. “Kate…Kate, oh, _please_.”

She smiled, yet his desperation continued. “Kate, will you…” But he couldn’t ask it of her, he could only plead. “Please.”

He had needed her permission to touch himself; he needed it still.

His pace was fast now but steady, and she knew the slightest change in it might release him, but he couldn’t yet. Not without her.

She was thinking now, not of his mouth at her cunt, nor his body beneath Ned Poins’, but of her blade at his throat. She didn’t touch herself, but her thighs were trembling with a sensation she rode out, a thrill not merely of the body. Her mind was filled with glory— _she was able to bring him to this_ —and her heart swelled not just with triumph, but affection.

When he was almost sobbing with need, she whispered gently, “Now, Henry.” And he came with a choked shout, his hips rising from the bed, the sharp scent of his orgasm reaching her like the fumes of a rare wine. Then the mattress sagged as he collapsed into it bonelessly. She turned her head to study his face in the faint moonlight. It was only visible because of the new, pale skin she had bared, and the expression was hard to name. Restful, open, vulnerable, peaceful, spent—utterly spent.

Catherine let her head fall back. Her drumbeat pulse slowed and, lying side by side in silence, they each fell asleep.


	5. Forgiveness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And so, the climactic (but not the final) act. Catherine and Ned put their plan into motion.

Catherine always ordered a fire started in her bedchamber as soon as the royal entourage arrived. Autumn started early in the north, and the thick castle stones never grew fully warm. Alice went up to see to it, and to supervise the unpacking—and to look after a few other matters, too.

She appeared behind Catherine as the royal guests were prepared to walk in to supper. “I believe you will approve of the room, my lady.”

“It’s comfortable?” She glanced from the corner of her eye to see her serving woman and trusted friend pressing her lips thin.

“I’m sure you will find it so.”

“And is it private, Alice?” Catherine murmured.

She didn’t smile. “I would say rather that it commands the view you have hoped for.”

Something fluttered in Kate’s breast with cold wings, stirring drafts she had suppressed. To Henry, she had become a demanding lover—taking advantage of his generousness—but not a cruel one. If he was surprised by her transformation, he was also gratified.

This pleased her, but not enough to call off the tactics she now saw herself about to go through with.

“That is excellent,” she told Alice. “I’ve been eager to study my new kingdom.”

“Of course, my lady.”

Catherine held back a grin. She had not told Alice the details of what she considered, nor had Alice asked. Though such knowledge would not have added to her peace of mind, keeping it from her caused a pang of guilt greater than any she had felt over this plan. “Tell Owen to bring Ned Poins up after supper.”

Bemused, Alice curtsied and swept away. The next thing Catherine knew, her husband had appeared at her side, offering his arm to escort her to the feast.

The long days of travel usually gave her an appetite, but tonight her stomach wouldn’t settle. She nibbled at meat and pastry and tried not to drink too much wine. Henry, too, imbibed sparingly. Perhaps that was just as well.

As he passed her a silver platter, she leaned close and whispered, “Can I expect you tonight?”

His smile warmed her to the ground. “Whatever you desire, Kate.”

She brushed his hand as she accepted the delicacies he offered.

After dinner, she bathed quickly to clear off the dust of the road. While she did, she surveyed the room. As Alice had said, it was comfortable enough. The bed seemed a little narrow by the royal standards Kate had become accustomed too—about the span of her husband’s arms, she would judge—and the tapestries on the wall were rich in color and design but wearing threadbare. The few windows in the one outside wall were high, narrow, and granted a miserly view of gray countryside.

She had begun to comb her drying hair when Alice came in, carrying a jug of wine and followed by Ned Poins.

Their eyes met in the mirror. He remained standing at the center of the room as Alice prepared a table and left (not without a final curious glance of her own). When Kate turned to him, he bowed. She smiled. At her gesture, he took a seat in one shadowed corner, difficult to see from the door.

Not that it mattered—when Henry came in, he had eyes only for her.

She rose as he approached. For him she couldn’t smile, not at this moment. He was wearing a simple velvet tunic that clung to his strong, slender form, with a circlet on his head from the feast, and except for his clean-shaven face, he looked exactly as he had the day he bargained for her hand. Catherine couldn’t find her sweetness.

But as he murmured, “Hello, Kate,” her heart still thrilled. That strange, short, hard nickname had come to fit so well. And while Henry’s voice was soft, almost shy, she didn’t feel a moment of uncertainty.

In the shadows, Ned braced pale hands on the bench where he sat.

“You don’t even look tired,” Harry said as his hands settled on her hips. “Travel seems to suit you.”

“As charm suits you,” she answered. His laughter hitched his chest against hers.

“What do you think of it?” Harry’s question brushed her ear as his touch caressed the small of her back. “Of England, now that you have seen it?”

He was awash with his old charm. She reached back, stilling his hands, but bent her head for his mouth. His charm was fun to play with, and she could let it run on a little longer. In case, some cautious part of her considered, it was the last time. The chance of it stung her conscience. She would not want to destroy this.

She didn’t glance in the corner, but she knew Ned was watching them. Watching, she realized, this glimpse of Hal-that-was.

“My dear?” he asked as the kiss ended. “You have not shared your thoughts.” Then, wickedly—“Or do you fear your French tongue cannot do justice to our kingdom?”

“My kingdom.” She spoke the words without thinking, but slowly, drawing out the taste of them. “Your England. _My_ England. Is that not so?”

Kate drew back to see Harry’s face. His expression was curious more than anything, amused. Perhaps charmed.

“As France is yours,” she said, “and I am yours, and you are mine. And all that is yours is mine. France, and England, too.”

“Ah, Kate!” Pink began to brush his cheeks. “You had told me then that you couldn’t understand me.”

“I have come to understand. Many things. Your language, our kingdoms. And you, my lord. I understand now what you have given me.” Her fingers traced his crown, then gently eased it from his head. She stroked his soft hair. “We hold the thrones of two kingdoms between us. That is what you have brought me. Everything you have done, your wise words and long labors and—” At this she stepped back so he would not feel her shiver “—everything you have given up. It has all been to offer me this.”

“Kate!” He laughed, and something within her flared.

“Mock me mercifully, my lord, because I love thee cruelly.” His title was not worth half the stress she put on the preceding word, delicious in her mouth: _my_. Nearly as delicious was the chance to turn his words back on him—words he had not realized she made such study of. Oh yes, she understood what he said. “England is mine. You are mine. And I have come to love both.”

“I am not mocking you, in truth.” He took her hand and lifted it to his lips for a kiss, but she pulled free. The scuff of her footsteps and whispering hem covered a sound from the shadows.

“I believe you don’t intend to. You have been generous, my lord. But for all you have given, have you ever asked what I wanted?”

Harry looked up, caught as he had begun to bend before her. He didn’t straighten himself. His flush had deepened, and she wondered at what it meant. “What do you want, Kate?”

Her breath shook from her lips. “To your knees.”

He went there very easily.

He’d knelt for her before—with hand outstretched, asking; between her legs, offering—but never before for no reason but her words, purely because she had asked it. She had always found the gesture pleasant. But now she took a moment to simply absorb it, basking in the pure satisfaction of having a king subservient.

Harry’s head tipped up to look at her, and she admired his perfectly shaven jawline. She remembered his teasing her— _Chin, not sin, my lovely Kate. But I can show you the difference…_ How he nuzzled her, careful of the rasp from his beard. Without it, he looked as if he were missing a mask.

“I think about what you have given and given up,” she said. “And sometimes I worry for you, husband. I consider if you have not given up too much. You have not come this far honestly.”

He blinked and seemed about to say something, but silenced himself at her look.

Kate strode close and grasped his jaw. His pulse struck against her fingertips, jumping as their eyes met. “I know,” she said, stroking with her thumb soothingly. “I know everything. It’s all right.”

“Kate—”

Her hold tightened. “I want to help you pay for it.”

She felt the tension flowing from him, released in surrender. She felt it tighten again in the moment after she said, “Both of us will.” And then fall slack.

Ned came to her side, his eyes fixed on Henry. As if they would devour him. For a time neither man moved, Ned standing still, Harry kneeling frozen with the shock. Then, slowly, the king smiled. It was small and charming and trembling fit to break apart.

“Ned!” The word so soft it was almost a sigh.

A flash of movement from the corner of Catherine’s eye as a spasm passed through Poins in answer.

“Ned, what are you doing _here_?”

“It’s quite simple,” Catherine said. “I am queen of England. Ned Poins is my loyal subject.”

“Perhaps yours too, to my lord,” he added quietly.

She bent closer and murmured in her husband’s ear, “You see, you have brought all of us together.”

His pulse fluttered.

“Now,” Catherine said, raising her voice for Ned to hear. “What shall we do with you?”

“You said you want me to pay.” Henry’s tongue darted across his lips. “How can I? How _can_ I pay?” He looked between them, but his expression was hard to read. He spoke with seeming calm; she wondered if his voice had been washed clean like his face with the double shock of his wife’s demand and Ned’s appearance.

“You don’t ask _for what_ ,” she observed. “But I want to be sure you understand that first.”

“For what I had given up,” he said, eyes still on Ned.

“Yes. And what you have forced others to sacrifice. I have pride, my lord. French pride, perhaps. A queen’s pride, most certainly. But I also have a duty to my people and to yours. To the dead, husband.”

First Ned nodded—they had spoken of what they would do more than why they did it, but she thought he understood her. After a moment, Henry nodded, too.

She loosened her hand at his throat. “Do you know how many died at Agincourt?”

He answered promptly, “Ten thousand.” Taking a deep breath, he continued, “One hundred twenty six of these were princes, nobles. Eight thousand and four hundred were knights and their squires. Five hundred newly dubbed.”

His gaze dropped to Catherine’s feet, which had taken a step back from him. “Only sixteen hundred,” he added, “were mercenaries. So they told me.”

“And those shall count, too,” she said.

Henry nodded.

“Ten thousand.” She took a deeper breath and repeated, “Ten thousand.”

In the French court they had not talked of the cost. Alice brought her some news, some names. Ned had told her more. And Owen, he had been the one to describe Harry’s reaction to the news at the end of the battle. His absolute terror.

“What of the English dead?” she asked now.

“Only twenty nine.” His voice trembled more on this than on the ten thousand. She wondered then if the French number included the prisoners he had slain, that Owen had told her of. Did it matter? Surely ten thousand would be enough.

“Ten thousand and twenty nine.” She released Henry, and he bent forward as if unsettled, as if he’d been relying on her grip for balance.

Alice had left the thin wooden box resting on a trunk beneath Catherine’s unpacked gowns. Not knowing what it contained. Now Kate went to it, raised the lid and took out the whip, slowly uncoiling the thong. She wasn’t sure where Ned had taken the implement from. It was too short to be one the carters used on their draft beasts, but wickeder than those usually used to discipline misbehaving apprentices.

She let the tongue skim the floor as she returned to the kneeling Henry and Ned, who still stood looking at him.

The charge she sensed between them was desire so mingled with disbelief that it could be taken for fear. There was reason for fear, too.

As Owen talked to her about her husband’s words after Agincourt, and the almost reverent horror with which he’d breathed them, Catherine had understood. Henry knew he was a liar, a usurper’s son. He was a rakehell princeling who hid from power as long as he could, and when he had to take up its reins, he’d also had to destroy or put aside anyone who would remember it. And destroy any who stood in the way of yet more power.

When he’d heard the toll of death at Agincourt, he had been terrified to find ten thousand deaths to his account, and only twenty nine of his own taken in exchange. He had won too great a victory. He must have known a reckoning would come for it sooner or later. And perhaps he’d prefer it to escaping without payment.

So when Kate told him, “One lash for each death. For penitence,” and he bowed his head, it might be his shoulders slumped with relief.

He needed to pay as much as they needed him to. For redemption as much as revenge. And Kate had to close her heart to that, for fear that it would soften. The greatest kindness she could show him was cruelty.

“We’ll begin tonight,” she said, “with the English dead.” A smaller number—though mercy was not the only reason.

Ned also studied Henry’s reaction. His stare was intense, but Kate could not say whether it took an effort for him to be cruel, if he loved Hal too much for it, or if because of that betrayed love he found it easy. He said suddenly, “Revenge for the Englishmen you sacrificed, Harry.”

That, too, the king took without protest.

“Undress,” she said, and he began to undo the buttons of his velvet doublet. Ned watched, swallowing once that she could see. She imagined viewing her husband’s body through new eyes, wondering how it had changed in the years since he became king. The scar that cut deep into his left shoulder, which Ned had told her of seeing in the bathhouse, still marked it, never completely healed. And other scars, newer, that Ned had never seen.

_Take a King,_ Henry had asked of her, _take a soldier…_

_And I have,_ she thought, relearning him, seeing what that meant. Feeling it as her fingers wrapped around the horn handle of the whip.

His leggings fell to the floor. His belly and cock were flushed with red, the beginning of an erection curving between his thighs. Kate pointed to the foot of the bed, and Ned took Harry’s arm and led him there.

She followed, tucking the whip under her arm like a distaff and untying her girdle with her free hands. Henry met her gaze over the strip of embroidered fabric—how like a lady’s favor it seemed, about to be offered before a tournament. He put his forearm to the post of the bed and let her bind it there. On his other side, Ned tied his left arm with his belt. Henry was held standing with his knees pressing the draperies that covered the mattress, his legs spread slightly either in sympathy with his arms or for balance.

They stood for a moment, the three of them, poised in silence. Ned took a band of soft linen from his pocket and offered it to Kate. She was the one to wrap it over Henry’s eyes, fastening it carefully to avoid pulling at his hair. She intended him to wear it a long while and didn’t want its discomfort to become distracting.

Even then, she hesitated before stepping back. This next act would be even more irrevocable than binding him.

But she did it. She turned away from her husband and, with a gesture, brought Ned after her. The two of them left the room. The door closed heavily behind them.

A turn in the hall, a short winding corridor led them to a cupboard of sorts sharing a wall with the bedchamber. A chink between mortar and stones provided the view Alice had appraised her of. Kate stood with her eyes to the peephole and looked in on Henry—bound and alone, with no one to charm. With no reason to wear a mask.

Even with the scars, his naked body was beautiful, strong and well-shaped, clean and colored with health. He stood like a portrait of a martyred saint. But painted saints had a sort of regal disdain for martyrdom and the trials of this world that Henry did not. At least Kate didn’t think so.

Beneath the blindfold, his expression was open, in a way that could be confused for blankness by one less intent on reading it. Others might confuse it for being closed-off, a man in control of what he experienced and what he showed of it. But Catherine understood curiosity and knew the look of it from her mirror—even passive curiosity; waiting, watching, listening, feeling, all the while learning.

But Henry had nothing to see, nothing to hear, nothing yet to feel, though he knew what he was waiting for. He had nothing to feed his curiosity, which after all was only another way to try to take control (Kate understood that, too). As she watched, she thought she could sense a tremor running along his limbs, inside them as much as outside. Dread, perhaps. Anticipation.

She felt it pulse between her legs. Oh, how she wanted this blind, naked boy she had made of her husband. Or that he had made of himself.

She ached with desire to see him on the cusp of surrendering to her, but when she did she wondered if even now he had some control of his appearance. He knew how much she wanted his surrender—she had rather revealed her hand. And would he give it for the asking? Because he always let her take what she wanted, because he was _selfless_?

Kate didn’t want that kind of sweet, tender chivalry, a bloodless _giving_. She needed to earn his surrender, not to be granted it; she needed to dominate him body and soul. She wanted him held in God’s hands and in her own. For revenge. For justice. For the beating need that simmered her blood. She didn’t want to destroy him, but she wanted to be _able_ to. And to do that, she must see _him_ and not his masks.

Perhaps stripping the last mask from him would be the greatest cruelty of all.

She pulled in a breath between her parted lips, imagining she could taste his helplessness, his waiting. His truth. And she knew then that he wanted the mask stripped. He needed to be honest about his sins in order to pay for them.

Perhaps he even wanted redemption—he had played at it often enough. He had made sacrifices to appear the good king. Now he would surrender more to be a better man. And perhaps a better husband as well.

Kate smiled. When she caught Ned looking at her questioningly, she said, “He wants to earn our forgiveness. At least as much as we want to give it to him. This is no mummer’s pageant.”

“Thank God,” he said, with a note of wryness that surprised her. “Imagine the moral of it.”

Despite his jest, his breath came short, too. She heard the rasp of it in the small, quiet room. From the corner of her eye she saw him tremble, much like Henry did—internal excitement fighting outwards, anticipation and fear and erotic need. Ned did not require Henry’s submission in the same grand way she did; his care was not for crowns but something simpler.

She took his hand, clasped it as if to offer reassurance. Or to take it. His palm was dry, as was the roof of her mouth. Both of them excited. Both of them dizzy with a heady turmoil.

And then Henry twisted in his bonds, not as if trying to escape them so much as feel them drawn to their limits, to catch himself against them. His shoulders bent, his taut legs relaxed. His head bowed so that she barely caught the movement of his lips, and she had to strain to hear.

He whispered, “Please.”

There was no answer from the empty room. It seemed unlikely that he expected one. Perhaps he spoke for the same reason he pulled at his bonds, or begged for its own sake.

Because he knew there was no one to hear, he was shameless.

And Kate could not wait any longer. She reached for the door of the cupboard, opened it slowly so it wouldn’t betray them with a creak. The door to the bedchamber she was more careless of, because she wanted to see his reaction as he entered.

Again he pulled at the leather and silk that tied him, this time finding leverage to straighten his shoulders, unbow his back. His hands clenched into fists as his bound wrists pressed at the bedposts.

She went to the wardrobe and pulled off her gown, stripping to her linen shift. It was soft and white as angel’s breath, almost transparent. As she passed the looking glass she saw herself—her face and breasts rosed over with a crimson blush, her hands steady and pale around the handle of the lash, her mouth open yet silent. She was a stranger, flame-eyed, frightening. She was herself, a woman taking her rights, a Queen who would be mother of kings having what she was owed.

Kate approached her husband, watched the muscles beneath his bare skin tighten at her footsteps. First she stroked his back—with her fingertips, gentle as he so often touched her own body, kind as chivalry, sweet as lovemaking. Then with the wrapped leather of the whip’s tongue. Brushing, not beating. Letting him sense it, letting him puzzle out what it meant—or just feel it. He was so sensitive; being left bound and blind and alone had flayed him more effectively than any strap. And she, too, had become so engrossed in him that her vision seemed to narrow. And more than vision. She knew when he flinched beneath her touch, whether or not it was visible. She knew how he yearned against her fingertips and the whip, straining for more than the mere substance of it.

She had learned so much of him. Curious, heeding the power of knowledge, keen to be prepared, she had learned his language and his history. She had learned to fuck him, to shave him, to give him orders. She had learned something of how to wield a whip.

Turning it, she brought the handle before Henry’s mouth.

She didn’t need to order him. He knew what to do. His lips pursed, and like a disobedient but contrite apprentice he kissed the instrument of his correction.

“Good,” she murmured, stroking his hair approvingly above the blindfold. Then she stepped back. Raised the lash. Brought it down across his shoulders.

It left a red mark, the skin more inflamed than broken. The next blow, too, did not cut deep. Catharine felt the rhythm of each swing, the whip heavy in her hand but firm, a pendulum weight. Perhaps, she thought by the fourth stroke, too predictable.

With the fifth lash, she drew blood.

A scattering of red beads forming over scratches of white, an angry flush following with almost leisurely slowness. Or so it seemed to her, so intent on watching that she forgot to let time pass, forgot to breathe or feel the beating of her heart. Henry’s shoulders trembled; the fists his hands made pulsed tighter, then relaxed.

She could almost scent his blood, like a hound on the chase. Passion boiled beneath her skin—a delirium of sudden anger. She struck again, not hard this time but deliberately, the tongue of the whip licking a long stripe across his back. She struck her husband, her king. Laying the blow as if in defiance of the price of kingship, of war, of death, of lies. Let a king pay the price, for once, in his own blood.

Henry had taken every blow like a king, but at this one he moaned like a man. Long and low and ragged. Still he stood straight, as if eager for what would come, and eager for the eyes watching him.

Ned had spoken of how Henry enjoyed rough treatment—slapping, bruising, forcing fingers—but the whip was different, true punishment. Although he continued to resist slumping in his bonds, she saw the sweat break out on his skin, and as salt mingled with blood at an open red line she saw him shake. At the eleventh blow his moan took on a roughness that made it almost a growl, of anger or a show of it.

As Kate, too, felt fury. Hot and swelling in her chest. Mixed with the ache of desire and with something more painful still—something that was not soft but perhaps should be, tenderness tempered, love forced rigid and unyielding. 

Twelve. Thirteen. Fourteen.

Her arm no longer felt like flesh, cracking with the stroke of the whip. These last few blows were so strong that her shoulders began to pull downward. She was too aroused to be exhausted, but it distracted her. Breath came slow and burning down her throat, meeting the ache that rose from her ribs and heart. A strange anatomy of passion. Caught in wonder at her own body, she missed his, had to try twice to land the whip across his back.

After sixteen, Ned came to her side. He said nothing, only turned to her with a questioning look. And something deeper in his eyes, like those eerie streams they had here in the north of England—dark water that ran smooth above, but dragged anything that touched its surface into the depths with breathless speed.

She offered him the whip.

His fingers wrapped around the handle as he approached Harry. His other hand reached out and brushed the straining shoulders, delicately avoiding raw stripes of furious red. The gentleness was interesting to watch. Kate stepped around the bed so that she could see her husband’s face. He was not smiling, but something about the way his features had settled made her think of peace, even bliss, like worshipping angels in the backgrounds of holy icons. It belied the ruin she had made of his back, the violence she inflicted.

It was too early to worry whether this was right or wrong, if she was merely cruel or utterly depraved. To fret about the consequences to her soul as well as Harry’s. As the seventeenth stroke cracked, as Harry cried out, something within Kate hardened once again. He had brought this on himself. On all of them.

They all needed his penance, before forgiveness.

Ned licked his lips before swinging the whip again. As it struck, she saw a tremor pass through his body, too.

The blindfold had darkened and stuck to Harry’s body now. A drop of clear liquid beaded and rolled from under it. Salt, she knew, whether tears or sweat. The thought that he was weeping made her come closer. Ned stalled his work for Kate to reach for her husband. She grasped the ends of his hair and jerked his head down. Into his ear, she whispered, “Would you have us stop?”

A long silence. She kept her grip firm, hoping to betray nothing by it. Otherwise, could even his _no_ be honest? If he thought she wanted to stop? Or if he thought she wanted to continue?

“Twenty one,” he murmured at last.

“What?” Ned asked.

“Twenty one so far, yes?”

“Yes.” Kate let her fingers move gently through Harry’s hair. “Yes, you’ve taken twenty-one so far.”

“Then…eight left.”

“Yes.” And she let go of him and stepped away. When he could not feel her reaction, she let a small, cruel smile sweep across her face.

“And this one?” Ned asked.

_Crack._ “Twenty-two.”

“But tell me.”

Harry swallowed hard, but his voice was still as rough as the weathered stones of this old castle. “Tell what, Ned? Please—”

“Who is _this_ one for?” _Crack._

“ _Oh._ ”

“Tell me their names, Hal—their names.”

Kate turned a kinder smile on Ned. It was genius. Though the penance had not been his idea, he saw the point of it perhaps even more clearly than she. He knew Harry needed to feel the _purpose_ of it. He needed to know his sins were seen, all of them. That he no longer bore the weight of them alone.

“Edward,” Harry said, and then something else—the man’s title, perhaps—that rasped too much at his throat to be articulate.

Ned accepted it, and gave him another stroke.

“This one?”

“Sir Richard—Ketly—”

“Not many more yet, Hal.”

The English names meant nothing to Kate, but she counted blows. _Twenty seven. Twenty eight._

And then Harry groaned, “Davy Gam, esquire,” and it was done.

Ned dropped the whip on the bed. In doing so, he took a step closer to the bound king, and there he froze. His breath brushed Harry’s shoulder; she saw them both quiver with it. Harry’s erection had lessened under the pain, but he was still flushed, visibly excited. The blood rushed under Ned’s skin, too.

Kate went to the table and poured a tall goblet of wine. She carried it to Ned, who accepted with a deep nod. He took a sip himself, then set the brim to Harry’s lips.

He gulped at the liquid until he sputtered, red drops falling down his chest in a mirror to the crimson on his back. Ned doused the dregs over his wounds, alcohol to cleanse them. Harry cried out at the stinging shock.

She brought them next a flask of rose otto to cleanse. Ned shook out a few drops of the precious golden oil onto a cloth and the musky sweet scent of it filled the air around them. He dabbed it over Harry’s back, barely hesitating at the heavy breaths it provoked. The blindfold was already wet with tears; what were a few last sobs?

When Ned untied the cloth and stripped it away, Harry’s eyes remained closed. He gently wiped their corners dry. His other hand stroked Harry’s side, up and down, wary of the stripes across his back. They were not badly aimed; none of them curved around his torso or cut too deep. They ended above his hips, with the small of his back and buttocks looking almost strangely pale and whole in contrast. Ned’s hand ran down to them, and one long finger followed the line of Harry’s spine and his cleft. Kate’s flesh prickled at the sight, a thrill running through her.

Through Harry, too; as Ned reached deeper her husband shivered and moaned. Not in pain, already she could tell the difference. This moan was deeper, and longer, and quite shameless.

Ned grasped Harry’s face between his hands and pressed a kiss to his open mouth. After it broke, his own breath heaving, it took him a moment of stuttering to ask, “May I?”

It seemed he had to turn away from the king to gather his courage for the request. But Harry turned his face, too, and his newly opened eyes—dark as ink, the pupils blown wide—fixed on Kate.

She realized the question had been made not so much of her husband as of her.

In their planning, she and Ned had touched on this possibility, but briefly. Not that they were shy of it, but they were well aware that too many matters were undecided.  Some things could not be presumed or forced. Penance they were entitled to, but not this.

And now both he and Harry stood waiting on her permission.

She made it instead a command. “Yes. Yes, take him.”

Ned nodded to her, almost a bow, while Harry closed his eyes with a low sigh. She heard it, felt it as if it ghosted over her skin; a surrender, an offering of obedience. A king prepared to do her will.

His will, too, if the louder sound he made at Ned’s delving hand was any indication.

Poins murmured something in Harry’s ear, too low for Kate to hear, and then reached to untie his bonds. As he let the girdle and belt drop, his king fell facedown to the mattress. Harry turned his head and made as if to gather his arms under him, but in the end he seemed to lack the strength or the will.

Ned kicked off his shoes and knelt beside him. He poured more rose oil from the flask and ministered again to his back. Then he let the next drizzle of oil fall lower, between Harry’s parted legs.

Kate came closer. She gripped the bedpost and leaned against it, keeping quiet so as not to disturb them, but watching.

She watched pale skin blush to match the velvet draperies on the bed as Ned’s hands passed over Harry’s body, and as he stopped to undress himself. He had seemed to forget his clothes at first, but now he tore them off. Harry looked at him, mouth open as if to taste the sight. His wet tongue appeared between his lips, anxious and hungry. More than desire, his expression communicated wonder.

Ned Poins didn’t look wondrous. He looked like a man. And yet Kate felt a swell of…something, not wonder and not quite affection, but warm, as she took him in with her own eyes. His flesh was softer than Harry’s, not a soldier’s body. He was flushed and aroused. His hands stroked unsteadily when they returned to Harry—at first gentle and then so roughly she saw the marks they left, sometimes moving in smooth lines along the curve of his shoulders, sides, hips, and sometimes weaving as if uncertain where to touch.  

They found Harry’s spine again, followed the path it made and the slickness of oil. Circles eased it in along his cleft, and the sensation made him moan, spreading his legs wider.

As Ned came to kneel behind him, Kate stepped around the bed to view them at a better angle. She caught the moment Ned’s fingertip breached her husband, the way they both stopped with a sharp breath, the only motion the sinking of Ned moving deeper, knuckle by knuckle. Once he had worked his finger in all the way, he turned his wrist, twisting out another moan. When Harry’s arse rose off the bed, hips pushing in short jerks, Ned smiled. This, then, was familiar to him. He still knew exactly what to do.

He drew his finger out, then pushed in with a second. Harry’s legs had gathered under him, partly folded, and strain corded their muscles. His hands dug at the blankets. Ned pressed his own free hand at the small of his back.

“All right, Hal?”

At first he didn’t answer in words. His face rubbed against the bed, newly smooth chin and cheeks sliding against silk. He raised his hand and reached back. His fingers didn’t close on anything but hung in the air. His wrist still bore the mark from where they had tied it, of her girdle with its pattern of embroidery.

“Ned,” he said. “Don’t be gentle with me.”

After a moment, Ned reached for his hand, took it. Then shoved it down to the small of his back. “I won’t, Hal.”

“Please…”

As Ned’s fingers shoved deeper into him—“ _Please_.”

It wasn’t clear to Kate what her husband—what Hal—pleaded for, but Ned seemed to know. Or not to care. His fingers continued working, brisk and precise. Soon Hal’s hips were shuddering, his face wet with new tears. She almost wanted to reach out and dry them, but that would interrupt.

Ned dropped Hal’s hand and let it fall to the blanket. He looked down at his body, at how open he was, and a smile creased his face—rueful, ruthless. He oiled his length, not, Kate thought, out of anything but concern for his own comfort.

“Do you want me, Hal?” he asked. His voice soft, but a little rough with ruefulness, or ruthlessness.

Hal did not ask for ruth. “Yes,” he gasped. “I want you.”

“How much?”

“How…” His mouth worked for words, yet it seemed he couldn’t find any.

“Do you want me to take you?” Ned prompted.

“Yes…”

“Do you want—” he caught Kate’s eyes. “Do you want to take me?” He made the words harsher, suggesting a very different sort of _taking_. To take not like a conqueror but a beggar. Not greedy but helpless. Not with domination but the desperation of the starving.

She smiled, proud that he had caught the ambiguity of her order. Which was meant for both of them, though Hal seemed lost beyond her reach now. He trembled at the sound of Ned’s voice, as if each sentence were a stroke from the lash.

“Yes,” Hal said. “I want you. Ned, I want you shamelessly. I always have.”

“No,” Ned said, this time with true compassion. “You were ashamed of me, once.”

_You traded him for kingship,_ Kate thought but didn’t say. _You discarded him like an empty cup, like a plume on a mummer’s broken mask._

“I would take that back,” Hal said. “If I could. I wish I could. I want…”

“Yes,” Ned said, and pushed into him.

Hal sighed, his eyes rolling back like a saint in ecstasy. Even Ned appeared for a moment transformed by bliss, uplifted by it. What they did seemed not like a sin but its opposite.

Kate watched them, watched the rock of their hips, the glimpses of Hal’s cock she could catch from the shadows between his thighs, flashes of Ned’s as it went in and out of him. They moved together effortlessly. Her husband taken by another man—a man she had invited into their bed. Her husband taking another man, as she had ordered him to. Her husband begging still—“Please, Ned, please…again, _there_ …ah, Ned, ah, _Kate…_ ”

It took an effort to remain still, to hide her surprise. To accept it as her due. Effortless.

Ned’s mouth grazed over Hal’s neck and shoulders, his chin brushing the topmost gouge from the lash and sending a wince through the king’s entire body. They both groaned as the contraction reached where they were joined.

Ned was fucking him not just with his hips but his entire body, with each thrust rocking into him. Slow. Not gentle, but not rough either, not yet. Hal didn’t try to brace himself. He let each stroke move him, sliding on the smooth blankets, until Ned had to anchor him with hands wrapped around his thighs.

He began to pant, echoing Hal’s pleading with a soft, raw, “Yes.”

“Please, Ned…”

“Yes.”

“I want you so much.”

“Yes.”

And then, just as their pace began to quicken, Ned stopped. He pulled out, unmoved by Hal’s sharp cry, betrayed and needy. He grasped Hal by the shoulder and turned him. Pushed him until his raw back touched the blankets. Brought his legs up and penetrated between them once again.

As he entered him, he lowered his face to Hal’s.

They didn’t kiss; he didn’t quite draw close enough. Hal began to moan, not asking anything anymore but simply taking, accepting. Accepting the pain as each thrust put their bodies’ combined weight on his wounds. As Ned punished him all over again, or so she thought at first.

Ned’s expression was not that of a man delivering punishment.

It was so much softer and more fragile.

As he looked into Hal’s face. Reunited with him. Forgiving him. Delivering pain and pleasure both, taking them too, his own eyes flooded with tears. Of compassion and anger and incredulous joy. Kate understood. She felt it too.

Her grip on the bedpost tightened until the knuckles went white. She didn’t know what to do with herself. So she tried to lose herself in the bodies moving on her marriage bed. She felt every stroke as a pulse between her own legs. She thought, very distantly, that the servants might wonder about the stained blankets the next morning. She thought of the blood running from Hal’s back and pushed her thighs tight together around another shameful throb.

But there was no reason for her to be ashamed for taking her due.

“Ned, _Jesus_ —” He gasped at a higher pitch as Ned’s hand began to stroke his cock. “ _Jesu._ ” A familiar sound, to her.

Yet she had never seen Hal look like this. Wholly surrendered, wholly fulfilled. They had broken something in him, she and Ned, together. They had broken the King down, and now they might put the man they loved back together.

“Stop,” she ordered then, so sharply Ned pulled out of him in shock as much as anything.

“Madam?” he asked. 

“Don’t let him finish just yet.” She began hike up her skirt and got onto the bed.

Understanding, he moved back for her. He’d left Hal crimson and aching hard, with a string of moisture starting down his length. Exactly as she wanted.

She sank down, taking him. Her nails raked over Hal’s chest. She couldn’t repress a rough sigh of satisfaction, almost a growl. His cock caressed her sex, making a tender pleasure swell up through her body. Evidence of the pleasure she had given him, now hers, sheathed inside her body. This was it. The sensation of him filling her was victory and immense satisfaction.

He moaned as she pressed his back against the bed, jarred it roughly as she ground against him.

Kate stripped her nightgown over her head and ran her hands down. Over her taut nipples, sharp against the palm of her hand, and across her stomach slick with excited sweat. She arrowed her fingers towards the apex of her legs, brushing lightly over her swollen and sensitive bud. It made her rhythm sharper as she rose and fell, rose and fell— Just as she began to shudder, not at climax but building to it, Hal gave out a cry. She felt the spasm of his cock jerking inside her as overwhelmed, overstimulated, he spent himself.

He groaned, then writhed as she kept fucking his sensitive cock for another few strokes. Painful, after he had come. She couldn’t even blame him—he had been hard and mostly-untended for so long that it was no wonder he fell apart—but she couldn’t hold back a snarl of frustration as her orgasm retreated, the urgency of her pleasure slackening.

“Kate, oh, Kate—” She realized he was crying her name.

“What is it?” Sliding off him, she gripped his jaw and turned his face to her. “Hal, what have you done?”

“I couldn’t—you felt so _good_ …”

“I did,” she said dryly. “I felt very good, before you interrupted. I hadn’t realized you could be such a _boy_. Was it too much for you to take?”

He swallowed, but couldn’t answer.

“After all I gave you, the only thing I wanted was one good fuck.” She bit off the end of each word, curt, like an Englishwoman. “And you couldn’t even give me that.”

Hal’s face became ashen, then flushed. As he raised a hand helplessly, just holding back from trying to touch her, Kate smiled and reclined on her elbows. She let her legs fall apart.

“But you will make it up to me.”

“Yes, please.” Relief passed through him in another shudder. He crawled to her, pressed his face against her cunt. The warmth of his breath made heat throb in her sex.  Then came his mouth, parted wide to cover as much of her as he could. His tongue glided between her folds and swept across her entrance until her hips bucked. His lips pursed against her bud and kissed it almost delicately.

She appreciated the delicacy, but it only enflamed her. She grasped Hal by the hair and pulled him where she wanted, harder. He licked at the tide of wetness that rushed from her—her essence and his seed, pearly fluid shimmering on her thighs. She felt him swallow it. It was more debasement then she could have imagined she wanted. Oh, but it pleased her. Her mouth fell open, her breath hitching in time to the lift of her hips. Higher, and higher, and higher.

Her eyes met Ned’s over Hal’s back. His look was enough to make her blush. She hadn’t the state of mind to question why. Why he made her feel even warmer, and both harder and softer at once.

She nodded to him. And as Hal continued to please her with his tongue, Ned took his place behind him. Hal gasped as he was entered. Her thighs rippled with tremors at the pull of Hal’s breath with each subsequent stroke. As her head fell back, she glimpsed her pleasure mirrored in Ned’s face as they both used him.

She was like a candle flame blown on. Flickering wildly, almost guttering. Flaring up, then, and burning proudly as ever.

She burned. She ascended.

Afterwards, Ned was the first one to stir. He rose from the bed. Wine sloshed in the cup, and the rustle of cloth bandages whispered in the quiet. Ned had brought those with him. Fetching such things would be too much to ask of her household, however loyal.

Smiling, Kate nudged Hal until he turned over. He would be riding stiff for a good many days, she thought, but he would not bear scars from this. She bent and trailed her lips over his torn back. When she raised her head and licked them, she tasted the bitter copper of blood. Royal blood, a usurper’s or not.

Ned had seen her do it, and he did the same when he returned. He nuzzled against Hal’s neck and whispered something under the curve of his ear. When his tears fell, they must be drops of salt in Hal’s wounds. And that was fitting.

Kate didn’t cry, not from shock or joy or relief; perhaps she didn’t have the nature for it. She helped wash Hal’s back and reapply rose oil and bandages. She held the goblet to his lips, then drank herself, sharing sips. She took care to offer the cup to Ned, too.

They rested beside Hal then until he dropped into sleep.

She saw Ned to the door. It was so late that only a few torches burned in the hall. He would be safe, unseen in the shadows.

“Madam.”

She gave him her hand. “What is there to say?” Though there were no tears, her voice vibrated with feeling. There was too much to say, and not all of it would be fitting from a queen to her subject.

“Thank you, Madam.”

“And you. Good night.”

He kissed the backs of her fingers, quick and warm. She did not watch him walk away. Instead she returned to Hal, her husband, her king. Careful, mindful of his pains, she took him in her arms. 

***

Despite the unevenness of the northern roads, she seized snatches of sleep in the carriage the next day. She had to. At times she could barely keep her eyes open.

She caught Alice’s look the third time she jumped awake as the cushioned bench rattled beneath her.

And she couldn’t help laughing. “What can I say to reassure you, my dear? It’s hard to explain—”

“ _Dear_ me all you like—Madam.” She spoke carefully in French, her tone testy without abandoning respect. “Catherine, are you certain of the wisdom of this?”

 “Very certain.”

With something that was not a snort, Alice turned her face to the window. After they’d rattled another half mile, she muttered, “If an affair were what you needed, I’d have thought Owen would suit.”

Kate covered her surprise with a cough, clearing road dust from her throat. “Owen!”

It wasn’t impossible. He was a likely lad, clever and well-mannered and well-formed. Out her solar window one day she had glimpsed him swimming in the river. Had taken maybe more than a glimpse. It was a pleasant sight, even for a contentedly married woman.

“Owen,” she said again. “I’m glad to have him in my household, Alice, but… Well…”

Alice nodded in a way that did not convey reassurance or approval. Surely she didn’t _want_ Kate to carry on an affair, with the Welshman or anyone else?

Perhaps, though, she’d rather have the Welshman than anyone else. At a flash of insight, Kate laughed.

“Ned Poins,” she said, “is not taking my husband’s place in my bed. I assure you of that, Alice.”

“Are you sure it is wise to get so entangled with him?”

A politic question deserved a politic answer. “I trust him, Alice. He means no harm to me or mine.” She added, “And anyway, he’s the elder brother of Eleanor. She’s been a fine addition to our household, no?”

“A helpful young lady,” Alice conceded guardedly. So guardedly that for a moment Kate feared that the suspicions about Nell Poins’ brother would come to haunt the woman’s own career. She had brought her into the palace household as a favor in light of the hard times the family had fallen on, but Nell had true accomplishment. She deserved her position and security.

If anyone should be judged, it ought to be Kate.

She lowered her voice to a scandalous whisper. “And anyway, Alice, if I were to commit adultery behind my husband’s back, do you think it would involve a peephole?”

Alice closed her eyes. When she opened them again, they were clear. Piercingly so. Empty of all knowledge or judgement, as a scrubbed room was emptied of grime. “I simply wish you happiness, Madam, however you conduct your affairs.” Despite the formality of the words, Kate sensed the real affection behind them. A sort of forgiveness, wiping out all suspicions for her sake.

“I am grateful for your trust,” she said.

“Well, I’m only returning like for like.” Alice smiled, small and uneven, almost a smirk. The next time Kate’s head began to sag on her shoulders, her handmaid squeezed onto the bench beside her to catch her and support her as she rested. 


	6. Honesty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ahh, I can't believe it's complete! Thank you all for sticking with me and offering your encouragement. 
> 
> I also want to share 2 amazing creations by theansweris42/Inkyonyx that tie in to this fic:
> 
> A playlist: http://andtheansweris42.tumblr.com/post/124722066302/when-love-becomes-the-reason-a-fanmix-1-claire
> 
> And cover art!: http://andtheansweris42.tumblr.com/post/130217515717/and-here-we-are-this-is-yet-another-edit-i-did

Catherine didn’t know the name of the castle they stayed in this night, but she greatly enjoyed its bed. Just the right size and so beautiful. Hung with heavy silk, the four broad, sturdy posts were carved with charmingly fanciful creatures and figures. She would bear the imprint of an oak leaf in the middle of her back for some time after this.

She sighed, not minding the ache pressing below her shoulders, rather enjoying the way it pulled as she let her hips flow the way she pleased. A circling motion, pressing her sex against her husband’s seeking, parted lips. A surge of pleasure as she felt his wet suction. His mouth trembled on her, an unsteadiness that brought her pleasure, too.

Over the king’s back, Ned was watching them with dark-eyed hunger. He folded aside the damp cloth with which he’d washed Hal after putting away the flogger. Another fifteen strokes; added to the twenty she had administered Thursday last and the twenty-nine of the first night, the king had paid with sixty-four blows in all. With many, many left to go.

Tonight Kate had held him pinned between her thighs while Ned wielded the flogger. She had felt each jerk and moan. Squeezing tight with her legs, she had brushed her hands soothingly over Hal’s shoulders and traced her nails between the healing marks, fading white and russet-brown. Her fingertips danced along the fresh welts. Ned had made his blows light and kept from breaking the skin. But they hurt. She felt how much they hurt in how Hal writhed beneath her.

And at a few blows she eased her grip, settling back and letting Hal thrash all he pleased, hearing his moans at her cunt, watching.

It turned out she enjoyed watching.

While Hal’s back had been healing from the first night, they had left aside the whip. But they did use the blindfold. Ned tied it firmly and jerked the king’s head back by the knot, leading him around on the bed. His fingers curled in Hal’s hair as he nudged his legs apart. Hal didn’t resist, not even the unconscious stiffness or slowness that might come from uncertainty. His face—or what she could see of it beneath the blindfold, especially the curve of his lips—relaxed utterly in surrender.

But a tremor ran down from his shoulders as Ned’s mouth brushed his ear. He moaned when Ned’s hand reached between his legs, when it pressed and penetrated. The sound grew and rose until Ned wrapped his other hand around the king’s jaw, forcing his forefinger between Hal’s lips.

“Do you want them to hear?” he whispered.

“W-who, Ned?”

He smiled with an audible, viciously cheerful purr, and his hand turned until Hal cried out.

But his trembling mouth fought for control, fought to shape around the intruding finger, “Who’s going to hear, Ned?”

He bent over Hal’s body and slowly released his hand from his mouth. Listening intently in the quiet, Kate could hear the wet slip of its release. Ned adjusted the strap of the blindfold over Hal’s ear and whispered into its curve, “Why, all of them, my lord.”

The shock struck Hal like the lash. Ned’s hand didn’t steady him, and perhaps he didn’t mean it too as he began to stroke him and continued, “There are the earls of Westmoreland and Salisbury. What must they think? And Warwick, he may well regret ever stumbling upon this room…”

Muscles in Hal’s back shuddered, and his cock twitched in Ned’s hand.

“And what would the Archbishops make of you?” Ned laughed, softly but with a frayed, wild edge to it. “What will they think, seeing a king _used_ …”

He positioned himself behind Hal. “And _conquered_ …” With a hand on the small of Hal’s back as if to steady or comfort him, he let his hips surge forward, sliding home with a single stroke. “… _fucked_.”

He pushed in again and his voice deepened to a growl. “And liking it, right, Hal?” 

“Yes.” He gasped at another thrust. “ _Yes._ ”

Ned continued to sink into Hal and pull out, each stroke slow as a caress. “What will they think?” he repeated. “And, of course, your lady wife…” His head turned in Kate’s direction for a moment of eye contact too searing to hold. She looked away until Ned dropped his gaze. She didn’t need to be seen, only given a show.

And Ned Poins proved a consummate showman. Mentioning her, bringing her into it, added another flush to the wet, pulsing heat between her legs. It was nothing compared to his effect on Hal. Even if the king suspected, intellectually, that Ned was misleading him, the very idea of being seen charged him.

And it shamed him. How could it not? Perhaps some portion of this humiliation was Ned’s revenge, to be taken out over the course of many nights just as hers was. Yet he also knew how the two mixed in Hal, shame and erotic charge. Nor was he indifferent.

His words were rough, half-whispered, difficult to hear—“They all must know you’re not a proper king.”

A test, too. Long ago, becoming a proper king, Harry _had_ left Ned behind for shame. Because he found his pride and his honor more important than anything. But how could he save his pride or honor now?

“The eyes of the entire world are on us,” Ned said, before he lost the ability to speak at all.

And Hal, usually so charming, so articulate, had long ago fallen apart.

Even once Ned took the blindfold off—after flipping Hal onto his back and pinning his hands, leaving him achingly hard and ready for Kate—even then, there was no way for Hal to be sure they weren’t watched. Certainly the room seemed empty, but Kate had demonstrated her talent for finding chambers with spyholes. The king would have to trust them.

She supposed they would have to trust him, too, if ever they were discovered putting him so thoroughly at their mercy.

Yet Ned had not been quite honest, though his dishonesty held a deeper truth. Remembering all he had told her of his first affair with Hal, Kate wondered if he found it sweet to be the one misleading him for once. It wasn’t as simple a motive as pure revenge, or even simple, sadistic challenge. He may have underestimated how it would charge them all, taking Hal in front of a phantom audience—and in front of Kate, who drank in every instant of the performance, savoring and memorizing every word.

She was gaining a command of the English language.

Now as Hal knelt between her legs and lapped at her cunt, she felt inspired to use some of it. To be honest with what exactly he made her think of.

“Sometimes tongues are better than cocks,” she observed, rocking against her husband’s mouth. Enjoying the twist her accent gave the English words—a useful but dull language coming alive between her lips.

Hal couldn’t answer in words, but she felt a hard pull at her sex as he swallowed. He was _sucking_ on her, like he would a cock. She remembered Ned’s story then and a flush of heat passed all over her. Hal’s tongue pressed across her opening, and then he swallowed again, and kept going until she felt open and tender from the mixture of friction and suction. Pulled at and aching and delighted. She had to bring a hand down, pressing her fingers in to fill herself, unmindful of his lips or tongue. He nibbled and kissed at her knuckles, lapped between them to reach her folds and swollen bud.

Ned still knelt behind him, a hand on Hal’s back, stroking lightly. Watching. But she knew that while he enjoyed watching, he liked even more to participate.

She met his eyes and said, “Don’t you agree?”

It was more a suggestion than an order, but stronger than a mere request. Something sparked in Ned’s expression. Then he bowed his head, brought it down to the king’s loins and backside. Licked the fresh-cleaned skin, let his tongue rove where his cock had been often enough.

Hal whimpered and squirmed. She felt the noises he made against her cunt and barely resisted squirming too. She trembled around her fingers and slowly withdrew them, sated for penetration for now. Wanting more of his tongue.

“All the same,” she said, “bring me off quickly so he can fuck you.”

He licked, but his strokes were unsteady. He bucked and writhed as he had while being whipped, pleasure as unbearable as pain. Helpless and humiliated and beloved.

This, then, was surely not a mask. He couldn’t pretend such reactions. He was theirs; they possessed him body and soul. Ned’s king, Catherine’s lord and husband. _Hers_.

And if any part of it was an act…if he harbored secret resentment at these punishments, if some part of him feared or chafed at them…it meant something, that he chose to hide that. That this was the mask he decided to don for them. Acting love for them, performing the part of lover and husband and slave.

He had warned her, when he was courting— _then if you urge me farther than to say ‘do you in faith?’ I wear out my suit._ Yet he had used so many words to court her. Enough of them proved honest. And Kate had fallen for his words—she’d had no choice but to marry him, yet she could have escaped his love. But then she had broken him, and she could not hold herself apart from that.

She could not hold—

His licking, still unsteady, did its work; her climax shuddered deep inside her and worked its way out. With a sigh, she let the pillar take her weight. Hal fell forward between her legs, his forehead connecting with the floor before his arms could cushion it.

Ned sat back on his heels, leaving Hal with a smack to his thigh. He went to pour wine at the side table. After rinsing his mouth in one cup, he brought another to the bed. Kate drank half of it at a swig, then held the rest down to her husband. Ned had to haul him up, open his mouth by sliding a finger at the corner of his lips. Hal swallowed obediently but not without spilling.

Laughing, Kate caught the stray drops with her hand. Ned found the ones she missed with his tongue. Hal moaned at the sensation.

“Bring more,” Kate whispered to Ned.

She guided Hal up onto the mattress, and there they lay him out, making him writhe at the sting of wine on his back, at the caress of their mouths. Her lips kissed welts and scratches; her teeth nipped as if she would have them reopen. She didn’t truly want that, of course. The faster he healed, the faster she could give him another twenty blows.

He had earned so many yet.

She found the marks of her nails on his shoulders and spine and nape, and the marks of Ned’s on Hal’s hips and lower back. And there, just above his cleft, she traced the mark she had embroidered. She smiled, remembering how she had taken both men aback when she brought out her sewing needle. The thread was royal blue, dark against reddened skin. Blood had stained a few of the stitches purple. But Hal had held still for her, and the shape was perfect. A fleur-de-lis. Her needle and her house’s sign marking him as if with a brand. He had won France, but France won him as well.

That was the truth.

Hal raised his head, and she saw the gleam in his eyes. Hellfire, feverishly burning.

Ned settled on the pillows against the headboard, his erection proud between his thighs. He looked patient, but he was the only one of them to not yet have received any satisfaction. Kate turned her husband towards him and gently shoved at his shoulders. At her direction, Hal went to straddle him.

Ned reached for the rose oil on the chest beside the bed. The heady scent stirred around them as he anointed his cock and Hal’s already spit-slick, tender entrance. Hal lowered himself slowly, with many a tremble and moan from both of them. Kate smiled to watch her men coming together, but need pulsed in her, too. This time she didn’t want to just watch.

And so, once Hal was filled, she climbed up the bed to sit behind him. Ned’s legs shivered as she brushed them with her thighs and cunt—in some ways it was the most intimate touch they’d ever exchanged. It was incidental, but she didn’t regret it. She looked around Hal’s body to meet Ned’s eyes, and he nodded to her.

His hands gripped Hal at the waist. Kate reached for her husband’s wrists, pulled them and pinned them behind his back. She felt his helpless weight become supported by her arms. He was a tall man, a strong man, but then shoving him upright gave her a chance to feel her own strength, drawn to its limits but sufficient. She leaned close, her breasts brushing beneath his shoulders, her head pillowed against his back.

Ned shifted and she had to grip tighter to Hal for balance. Getting up on her knees, she felt him rocking, moving on Ned’s cock. His own member brushed his lover’s stomach at this new angle—perhaps that was what spurred Ned to arrange it, though Kate could only catch glimpses when she brought her head around. _Too tall,_ she thought again of her husband, meaning it more than she usually did. But it seemed too arbitrary a fault to punish him for.

Still, he hissed so beautifully as her fingernails dug into his forearms.

Ned gave Hal’s cock a few strokes, then left it to explore more of his body—rolling one nipple beneath the pad of his thumb, caressing his neck, circling the knobs of his spine, squeezing his buttocks apart to reveal his own phallus working between them. Hal’s head fell back. His soft cries made Kate want to kiss him, but she would have to strain to reach his mouth. She didn’t bother, settling instead for his neck. Her lips and teeth left livid red stamps.

Eventually, Ned shifted again, this time moving them all into a new position. “I need—want you—” He lifted Hal off of his cock, then rolled to put him underneath. Kate had to get off them in the process, but then she returned. She wanted to feel the welts of her husband’s back against her breasts still. With a wave of her fingers, she had Ned give her a second pillow to rest against. Then she lay back, wrapping an arm around Hal’s shoulders, palm sliding across his collar bone, and reaching with the other to draw up his knee, opening his legs wider.

She was a cushion for her husband, supporting him, and though the disparity in their heights made it a little awkward as she squirmed to find the best position, and the weight even of his yielding body was as if she’d donned armor, she found it intriguing and pleasant. A lot of Hal’s length was in his legs, anyway. He sighed as her fingers stroked his joint, pulling his limbs higher.

Hal’s hands were free now. One rested on his inner thigh, close enough to his ruddy and gleaming cock to touch it. Of course, he didn’t. That wasn’t his right.

She felt when Ned entered him, felt his well-muscled soldier’s body be shaken with every thrust. Hal rocked over her, against her. After a first glance, Ned didn’t show any sign of hesitation, didn’t hold back from consideration for her. And that was exactly as Kate wished. Her nipples were hard and stung as lines of scarring tissue scratched over them. The embroidery at the small of his back was almost too fine a stitch for her to sense, but she knew it was there just above her mound. She rubbed at it, meeting Ned stroke for stroke.

Hal tossed his head, nearly colliding with hers. Kate forgave him; she couldn’t expect discipline when everything they did was aimed at bringing him apart. Impaled on Ned, embraced by Kate, he seemed on the verge of tears. She would have brushed them from his eyes, but not when each thrust from Ned shook all of them and her nails were sharp enough to draw blood from Hal’s arms. She could pinch him to bring him back from the edge she saw him soaring towards, but pain might not be the best tool for that.

“Ruth,” someone gasped, and to her private embarrassment she could never afterwards say which of them it was—Hal, begging mercy, or herself asking it on his behalf.

But Ned stopped, and Kate also held still, and between them Hal trembled. Ned stroked his hip and pressed his other hand over his heart. His lips brushed the king’s forehead and mouth.

Kate’s hand settled on his shoulder, then moved inward. She remembered stories of belts that served as leashes, and though she couldn’t reach her girdle now, she made do with her fingers. They settled on his neck without squeezing. Clasping his throat seemed to be what Hal needed. His breathing grew easier and his trembling slowed, although when her other hand tested his cock it was still pulsing hard, and so sensitive that he jumped. 

“Once more,” Ned said. “I’d like to try a new manner.”

Kate nodded, her head close enough to Hal’s to nuzzle against him. At her agreement, Hal nodded, too.

Ned pulled out, and after a last kiss to Hal’s lips, gently turned his body over. He pulled him so his legs were partly off the side of the bed and stood between them. Kate followed, letting Hal pillow his cheek on her thigh. She stroked his hair as Ned entered him again.

She knew he liked this angle, and drank in the expression of bliss on his face as Ned pushed in deep. Then out again and in, faster than he had been before. Their well-oiled, well-practiced movements were too easy to be rough.

It wouldn’t be long now; Kate knew that too. Ned was making a face that had grown familiar—tender and wicked and beginning to twist with passion. She swallowed a laugh at it. Her own could not be much better. Especially as Hal panted in her lap, hot and strong enough that his breath was almost a touch.

She reached down and parted her nether lips, nudged him a little closer. Obediently he brought out his tongue to lap at her sex.

“Very good, my dear,” she said—and repeated it, the words running together and half French, half English. “ _Tres bien, mon cheri.”_

“Catherine.” She looked up, startled at hearing her name from Ned. He smiled at her.

His hands were steadying Hal’s hips; she brought one of hers down to caress his fingers. He leaned closer. They shared a kiss, brief but warm. Close-lipped, but hardly chaste.

“My dear,” she said again, this time meaning both of them.

Hal whimpered between her thighs. It rose into a sharp whine at Ned’s last thrusts, until he pulled out and came over the embroidered mark on his back.

Kate stroked his hair and crossed her ankles above his shoulders, pulling him into a position she knew was uncomfortable but didn’t care. With a short gesture she indicated for Ned to take one of the soft cloths they kept at hand and clean Hal’s skin.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured as he did. As if he had defiled her sign, mismanaged her property, overstepped his bounds.

“Non-nonsense. There’s no—need,” she said, though speaking was difficult. Warm flutters of pleasure moved through her, building. She wasn’t displeased, only distracted.

Then Hal took his mouth away, and for a moment she truly was irritated. But he said, “May I—please may I give you my cock?” and it was a truly sweet offer. She was so touched by it that she felt a wash of affection as a physical joy, drawing her higher.

“No need,” she told him. She stroked his back, raising her hips against his mouth. Of course, his tribute would not have been entirely selfless. A fact that made her laugh almost despite herself—and, laughing, she reached her climax.

Ned joined them on the bed, a tangle of sweat-slick bodies limp with gratified exhaustion. As she drew Hal up to rest her head on his chest, she felt his cock brush her thigh. Still hard, still slick, and unsatisfied.

“Perhaps…” She let her fingers hover over him, close enough that he might feel their heat. Then she pulled away. There was the rest of the night in which she might decide to have pity on him.

Next she ran her hand over her cunt, its wetness audible. “You wanted this, I know.”

Hal nodded.

“You wanted only to serve me.” A little unease crossed his face at that, but she ignored it. She would not become a petty tyrant, although the fact that she _could_ had its savor. “I only refused because there truly is no need, my dear. You see…” Kate pet herself again, then pulled away. She pressed her forehead to his and their eyelashes fluttered against each other as both of them closed their eyes. She felt the soft warmth of Ned’s breath as he leaned over them. And then she whispered, “I have your child, my lord.”

“Kate!”

It was a boyish cry, startled and exuberant, and at it she grinned. “Yes!”

Ned pressed her shoulder, seemingly beyond words.

Inwardly she couldn’t help thinking of all they had done, of the timing of it, thinking, _what a way to sire a prince…_

It was what they had always meant to do, King Henry and Queen Catherine. She was his soldier-breeder. Their boy, under Saint Denis and Saint George, must conquer the world.

She wasn’t sure if it was what she had hoped for him—victory, yes, but more than that she would have safety for him, would have plenty and peace, if it were possible. Yet surely this was the most auspicious beginning he could have, a child of conquerors.

She stroked her belly, feeling a mingling of affection and pride and possessiveness. A little uncertainty for the future, but even more a sense of her own power. Bringing this about, creating a life—what was capturing a kingdom compared to what she had done?

Hal reached out, looking uncertain, and at her nod his fingers caressed her skin between the lattice of her own. There was nothing to feel yet—she had known only that her monthly courses had stopped—but he must feel in her touch that she was telling the truth. That she sensed the future life growing there. Reverence touched his expression then. She knew he agreed with her own thoughts.

“ _Tres bien, mon cheri_ ,” she said once more, sharing credit. “You’ve done very well, my love.”

And as she said it her eyes danced between both of them. Hal’s child, but Ned had his share of responsibility, too, his own reason for pride.

He nuzzled his king’s shoulder, kissing the bruises left on his neck. “Well done,” he said.

She might even forgive her husband the rest of his lashes. She could. Even if another blow never fell on him, the fact that he had submitted to them, accepted her sentencing, agreed to take her punishment, had bound him to her in a way that could never be altered. Her mastery was ensured. And so she could, if she chose, be kind. Bestow ruth.

Though she didn’t have to.

She kissed him and kissed Ned.

Whatever form it took, victory was sweet, and she was quite pleased with it.

***


End file.
